


(ilass L,^_3 L. 

Book I (Q 7 L-^ Ci 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 










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AUTHOR’S NOTE 

“Nostromo” is the most anxiously meditated of the 
longer novels which belong to the period following upon 
the publication of the “Typhoon” volume of short 
stories. 

I don’t mean to say that I became then conscious of 
any impending change in my mentality and in my atti- 
tude towards the tasks of my writing life. And perhaps 
there was never any change, except in that mysterious, 
extraneous thing which has nothing to do with the 
theories of art; a subtle change in the nature of the 
inspiration; a phenomenon for which I can not in any 
way be held responsible. What, however, did cause me 
some concern was that after finishing the last story of 
the “Typhoon” volume it seemed somehow that there 
was nothing more in the world to write about. 

This so strangely negative but disturbing mood 
lasted some little time; and then, as with many of my 
longer stories, the first hint for “Nostromo” came to 
me in the shape of a vagrant anecdote completely des- 
titute of valuable details. 

As a matter of fact in 1875 or ’6, when very young, in 
the West Indies or rather in the Gulf of Mexico, for my . 
contacts with land were short, few, and fleeting, I heard 
the story of some man who was supposed to have stolen 
single-handed a whole lighter-full of silver, somewhere 

vii 


viii AUTHOR’S NOTE 

on the Tierra Firme seaboard during the troubles of a 
revolution. 

On the face of it this was something of a feat. But I 
heard no details, and having no particular interest in 
crime qua crime I was not likely to keep that one in my 
my mind. And I forgot it till twenty -six or seven years 
afterwards I came upon the very thing in a shabby 
volume picked up outside a second-hand book-shop. It 
was the life story of an American seaman written by 
himself with the assistance of a journalist. In the 
course of his wanderings that American sailor worked 
for some months on board a schooner, the master and 
owner of which was the thief of whom I had heard in 
my very young days. I have no doubt of that because 
there could hardly have been two exploits of that pecu- 
liar kind in the same part of the world and both con- 
nected with a South American revolution. 

The fellow had actually managed to steal a lighter 
with silver, and this, it seems, only because he was im- 
plicitly trusted by his employers, who must have been 
singularly poor judges of character. In the sailor’s 
story he is represented as an unmitigated rascal, a small 
cheat, stupidly ferocious, morose, of mean appearance, 
and altogether unworthy of the greatness this oppor- 
tunity had thrust upon him. What was interesting 
was that he would boast of it openly. 

He used to say: “People think I make a lot of 
money in this schooner of mine. But that is nothing. 
I don’t care for that. Now and then I go away quietly 
and lift a bar of silver. I must get rich slowly — you 
understand.” 

There was also another curious point about the man. 
Once in the course of some quarrel the sailor threatened 
him: “What’s to prevent me reporting ashore what 
you have told me about that silver?” 


AUTHOR’S NOTE 


IX 


The cynical ruffian was not alarmed in the least. He 
actually laughed. “You fool, if you dare talk like that 
on shore about me you will get a knife stuck in your 
back. Every man, woman, and child in that port is 
my friend.^ And who’s to prove the lighter wasn’t 
sunk? I didn’t show you where the silver is hidden. 
Did I? So you know nothing. And suppose I lied? Eh?” 

Ultimately the sailor, disgusted with the sordid mean- 
ness of that impenitent thief, deserted from the schooner. 
The whole episode takes about three pages of his 
autobiography. Nothing to speak of; but as I looked 
them over, the curious confirmation of the few casual 
words heard in my early youth evoked the memories 
of that distant time when everything was so fresh, so 
surprising, so venturesome, so interesting; bits of strange 
coasts under the stars, shadows of hills in the sunshine, 
men’s passions in the dusk, gossip half-forgotten, faces 
grown dim. . . . Perhaps, perhaps, there still was 

in the world something to write about. Yet I did not 
see anything at first in the mere story. A rascal steals 
a large parcel of a valuable commodity — so people say. 
It’s either true or untrue; and in any case it has no 
value in itself. To inv^t a circumstantial account of 
the robbery did not appeal to me, because my talents 
not running that way I did not think that the game was 
worth the candle. It was only when it dawned upon 
me that the purloiner of the treasure need not neces- 
sarily be a confirmed rogue, that he could be even a man 
of character, an actor and possibly a victim in the 
changing scenes of a revolution, it was only then that 
I had the first vision of a twilight country which was 
to become the province of Sulaco, with its high shadowy 
Sierra and its misty Campo for mute witnesses of events 
flowing from the passions of men short-sighted in good 
and evil. 


X 


AUTHOR’S NOTE 


Such are in very truth the obscure origins of “Nos- 
tromo” — the book. From that moment, I suppose, 
it had to be. Yet even then I hesitated, as if warned 
by the instinct of self-preservation from venturing on a 
distant and toilsome journey into a land full of intrigues 
and revolutions. But it had to be done. 

It took the best part of the years 1903-4 to do; with 
many intervals of renewed hesitation, lest I should lose 
myself in the ever-enlarging vistas opening before me 
as I progressed deeper in my knowledge of the country. 
Often, also, when I had thought myself to a standstill 
over the tangled-up affairs of the Republic, I would, 
figuratively speaking, pack my bag, rush away from 
Sulaco for a change of air and write a few pages of the 
“Mirror of the Sea.” But generally, as I’ve said be- 
fore, my sojourn on the Continent of Latin America, 
famed for its hospitality, lasted for about two years. 
On my return I found (speaking somewhat in the style 
of Captain Gulliver) my family all well, my wife heartily 
glad to learn that the fuss was all over, and our small 
boy considerably grown during my absence. 

My principal authority for the history of Costaguana 
is, of course, my venerated friend, the late Don Jose 
Avellanos, Minister to the Courts of England and Spain, 
etc., etc., in his impartial and eloquent “History of Fifty 
Years of Misrule.” That work was never published — 
the reader will discover why — and I am in fact the only 
person in the world possessed of its contents. I have 
mastered them in not a few hours of earnest meditation, 
and I hope that my accuracy will be trusted. In justice 
to myself, and to allay the fears of prospective readers, 
I beg to point out that the few historical allusions are 
never dragged in for the sake of parading my unique 
erudition, but that each of them is closely related to 
actuality; either throwing a light on the nature of cur- 


AUTHOR’S NOTE 


XI 


rent events or affecting directly the fortunes of the 
people of whom I speak. 

As to their own histories I have tried to set them 
down, Aristocracy and People, men and women, Latin 
and Anglo-Saxon, bandit and politician, with as cool a 
hand as was possible in the heat and clash of my own 
conflicting emotions. And after all this is also the 
story of their conflicts. It is for the reader to say how 
far they are deserving of interest in th^ir actions and 
in the secret purposes of their hearts revealed in the 
bitter necessities of the time. I confess that, for me, 
that time is the time of firm friendships and unforgotten 
hospitalities. And in my gratitude I must mention 
here Mrs. Gould, “the first lady of Sulaco,” whom we 
may safely leave to the secret devotion of Dr. Mony- 
gham, and Charles Gould, the Idealist-creator of Ma- 
terial Interests whom we must leave to his Mine — 
from which there is no escape in this world. 

About Nostromo, the second of the two racially and 
socially contrasted men, both captured by the silver of 
the San Tome Mine, I feel bound to say something 
more. 

I did not hesitate to make that central figure an Ital- 
ian. First of all the thing is perfectly credible : Italians 
were swarming into the Occidental Province at the 
time, as anybody who will read further can see; and 
secondly, there was no one who could stand so well by 
the side of Giorgio Viola the Garibaldino, the Idealist 
of the old, humanitarian revolutions. For myself I 
needed there a man of the People as free as possible 
from his class-conventions and all settled modes of 
thinking. This is not a side snarl at conventions. My 
reasons were not moral but artistic. Had he been an 
Anglo-Saxon he would have tried to get into local poli- 
tics. But Nostromo does not aspire to be a leader in a 


AUTHOR’S NOTE 


xii 

personal game. He does not want to raise himself 
above the mass. He is content to feel himself a power 
— within the People. 

But mainly Nostromo is what he is because I re- 
ceived the inspiration for him in my early days from a 
Mediterranean sailor. Those who have read certain 
pages of mine will see at once what I mean when I say 
that Dominic, the padrone of the Tremolino, might under 
given circumstances have been a Nostromo. At any 
rate Dominic would have understood the younger man 
perfectly — if scornfully. He and I were engaged to- 
gether in a rather absurd adventure, but the absurdity 
does not matter. It is a real satisfaction to think that 
in my very young days there must, after all, have been 
something in me worthy to command that man’s half- 
bitter fidelity, his half-ironic devotion. Many of Nos- 
tromo’s speeches I have heard first in Dominic’s voice. 
His hand on the tiller and his fearless eyes roaming the 
horizon from within the monkish hood shadowing his 
face, he would utter the usual exordium of his remorse- 
less wisdom: “Vous autres gentilhommes ! ” in a caus- 
tic tone that hangs on my ear yet. Like Nostromo! 
“You hombres finos!” Very much like Nostromo. 
But Dominic the Corsican nursed a certain pride of 
ancestry from which my Nostromo is free; for Nos- 
tromo’s lineage had to be more ancient still. He is a 
man with the weight of countless generations behind 
him and no parentage to boast of. . . . Like the 

People. 

In his firm grip on the earth he inherits, in his im- 
providence and generosity, in his lavishness with his 
gifts, in his manly vanity, in the obscure sense of his 
greatness and in his faithful devotion with something 
despairing as well as desperate in its impulses, he is a 
Man of the People, their very own unenvious force. 


AUTHOR’S NOTE 


xiii 

disdaining to lead but ruling from within. Years after- 
wards, grown older as the famous Captain -Fidanza, 
with a stake in the country, going about his many affairs 
followed by respectful glances in the modernized streets 
of Sulaco, calling on the widow of the cargador, attend- 
ing the Lodge, listening in unmoved silence to anarchist 
speeches at the meeting, the enigmatical patron of the 
new revolutionary agitation, the trusted, the wealthy 
comrade Fidanza with the knowledge of his moral ruin 
locked up in his breast, he remains essentially a man 
of the People. In his mingled love and scorn of life and 
in the bewildered conviction of having been betrayed, 
of dying betrayed he hardly knows by what or by whom, 
he is still of the People, their undoubted Great Man — 
with a private history of his own. 

One more figure of those stirring times I would like to 
mention: and that is Antonia Avellanos — the “beautiful 
Antonia.” Whether she is a possible variation of Latin- 
American girlhood I wouldn’t dare to affirm. But, for 
me, she is. Always a little in the background by the 
side of her father (my venerated friend) I hope she has 
yet relief enough to make intelligible what I am going 
to say. Of all the people who had seen with me the 
birth of the Occidental Republic, she is the only one 
who has kept in my memory the aspect of continued 
life. Antonia the Aristocrat and Nostromo the Man of 
the People are the artisans of the New Era, the true 
creators of the New State; he by his legendary and dar- 
ing feat, she, like a woman, simply by the force of what 
she is: the only being capable of inspiring a sincere 
passion in the heart of a trifler. 

If anything could induce me to revisit Sulaco (I 
should hate to see all these changes) it would be An- 
tonia. And the true reason for that — why not be frank 
about it? — the true reason is that I have modelled her 


XIV 


AUTHOR’S NOTE 


on my first love. How we, a band of tallish schoolboys, 
the chums of her two brothers, how we used to look 
up to that girl just out of the schoolroom herself, as the 
standard-bearer of a faith to which we all were born but 
which she alone knew how to hold aloft with an un- 
flinching hope! She had perhaps more glow and less 
serenity in her soul than Antonia, but she was an un- 
compromising Puritan of patriotism with no taint of the 
slightest worldliness in her thoughts. I was not the 
only one in love with her; but it was I who had to hear 
oftenest her scathing criticism of my levities — very 
much like poor Decoud — or stand the brunt of her aus- 
tere, unanswerable invective. She did not quite un- 
derstand — but never mind. That afternoon when I 
came in, a shrinking yet defiant sinner, to say the final 
good-bye I received a hand-squeeze that made my heart 
leap and saw a tear that took my breath away. She was 
softened at the last as though she had suddenly per- 
ceived (we were such children still!) that I was really 
going away for good, going very far away — even as far 
as Sulaco, lying unknown, hidden from our eyes in the 
darkness of the Placid Gulf. 

' That’s why I long sometimes for another glimpse of the 
“beautiful Antonia” (or can it be the Other?) moving in 
the dimness of the great cathedral, saying a short prayer 
at the tomb of the first and last Cardinal-Archbishop of 
Sulaco, standing absorbed in filial devotion before the 
monument of Don Jose Avellanos, and, with a lingering, 
tender, faithful glance at the medallion-memorial to 
Martin Decoud, going out serenely into the sunshine of 
the Plaza with her upright carriage and her white head; 
a relic of the past disregarded by men awaiting im- 
patiently the Dawns of other New Eras, the coming of 
more Revolutions. 

But this is the idlest of dreams; for I did understand 


AUTHOR’S NOTE 


XV 


perfectly well at the time that the moment the breath 
left the body of the Magnificent Capataz, the Man of 
the People, freed at last from the toils of love and 
wealth, there was nothing more for me to do in Sulaco. 


October, 1917. 


J. C. 




CONTENTS 


PART FIRST 

The Silver of the Mine 3 

PART SECOND / 

The Isabels 135 

PART THIRD 

The Lighthouse 307 



PART FIRST 


THE SILVER OF THE MINEj 



$■ 





NOSTROMO 

CHAPTER ONE 

In the time of Spanish rule, and for many years after- 
wards, the town of Sulaco — the luxuriant beauty of the 
orange gardens bears witness to its antiquity — had 
never been commercially anything more important than 
a coasting port with a fairly large local trade in ox-hides 
and indigo. The clumsy deep-sea galleons of the con- 
querors that, needing a brisk gale to move at all, would 
lie becalmed, where your modern ship built on clipper 
lines forges ahead by the mere flapping of her sails, had 
been barred out of Sulaco by the prevailing calms of its 
vast gulf. Some harbours of the earth are made dif- 
ficult of access by the treachery of sunken rocks and the 
tempests of their shores. Sulaco had found an in- 
violable sanctuary from the temptations of a trading 
world in the solemn hush of the deep Golfo Placido as if 
within an enormous semi-circular and unroofed temple 
open to the ocean, with its walls of lofty mountains 
hung with the mourning draperies of cloud. 

On one side of this broad curve in the straight sea- 
board of the Republic of Costaguana, the last spur of 
the coast range forms an insignificant cape whose name 
is Punta Mala. From the middle of the gulf the point 
of the land itself is not visible at all; but the shoulder of 
a steep hill at the back can be made out faintly like a 
shadow on the sky. 

On the other side, what seems to be an isolated patch 
3 


4 


NOSTROMO 


of blue mist floats lightly on the glare of the horizon. 
This is the peninsula of Azuera, a wild chaos of sharp 
rocks and stony levels cut about by vertical ravines. It 
lies far out to sea like a rough head of stone stretched 
from a green-clad coast at the end of a slender neck of 
sand covered with thickets of thorny scrub. Utterly 
waterless, for the rainfall runs off at once on all sides 
into the sea, it has not soil enough — it is said — to grow 
a single blade of grass, as if it were blighted by a curse. 
The poor, associating by an obscure instinct of con- 
solation the ideas of evil and wealth, will tell you that 
it is deadly because of its forbidden treasures. The 
common folk of the neighbourhood, peons of the 
estancias, vaqueros of the seaboard plains, tame Indians 
coming miles to market with a bundle of sugar-cane 
or a basket of maize worth about threepence, are well 
aware that heaps of shining gold lie in the gloom of the 
deep precipices cleaving the stony levels of Azuera. 
Tradition has it that many adventurers of olden time had 
perished in the search. The story goes also that within 
men’s memory two wandering sailors — ^Americanos, 
perhaps, but gringos of some sort for certain — talked 
over a gambling, good-for-nothing mozo, and the three 
stole a donkey to carry for them a bundle of dry sticks, 
a water-skin, and provisions enough to last a few days. 
Thus accompanied, and with revolvers at their belts, 
they had started to chop their way with machetes 
through the thorny scrub on the neck of the peninsula. 

On the second evening an upright spiral of smoke (it 
could only have been from their camp-fire) was seen for 
the first time within memory of man standing up faintly 
upon the sky above a razor-backed ridge on the stony 
head. The crew of a coasting schooner, lying becalmed 
three miles off the shore, stared at it with amazement 
till dark. A negro fisherman, living in a lonely hut in a 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


5 


little bay near by, had seen the start and was on the look- 
out for some sign. He called to his wife just as the sun 
was about to set. They had watched the strange por- 
tent with envy, incredulity, and awe. 

The impious adventurers gave no other sign. The 
sailors, the Indian, and the stolen burro were never 
seen again. As to the mozo, a Sulaco man — -his wife 
paid for some masses, and the poor four-footed beast, 
being without sin, had been probably permitted to die; 
but the two gringos, spectral and alive, are believed to 
be dwelling to this day amongst the rocks, under the 
fatal spell of their success. Their souls cannot tear 
themselves away from their bodies mounting guard over 
the discovered treasure. They are now rich and hun- 
gry and thirsty — a strange theory of tenacious gringo 
ghosts suffering in their starved and parched flesh of 
defiant heretics, where a Christian would have re- 
nounced and been released. 

These, then, are the legendary inhabitants of Azuera 
guarding its forbidden wealth; and the shadow on the 
sky on one side with the round patch of blue haze 
blurring the bright skirt of the horizon on the other, 
mark the two outermost points of the bend which bears 
the name of Golfo Placido, because never a strong 
wind had been known to blow upon its waters. 

On crossing the imaginary line drawn from Punta 
Mala to Azuera the ships from Europe bound to Sulaco 
lose at once the strong breezes of the ocean. They be- 
come the prey of capricious airs that play with them for 
thirty hours at a stretch sometimes. Before them the 
head of the calm gulf is filled on most days of the year 
by a great body of motionless and opaque clouds. On 
the rare clear mornings another shadow is cast upon the 
sweep of the gulf. The dawn breaks high behind the 
towering and serrated wall of the Cordillera, a clear-cut 


6 


NOSTROMO 


vision of dark peaks rearing their steep slopes on a lofty 
pedestal of forest rising from the very edge of the shore. 
Amongst them the white head of Higuerota rises 
majestically upon the blue. Bare clusters of enormous 
rocks sprinkle with tiny black dots the smooth dome of 
sjaow. . » 

Then, as the midday sun withdraws from the gulf 
the shadow of the mountains, the clouds begin to roll 
out of the lower valleys. They swathe in sombre 
tatters the naked crags of precipices above the wooded 
slopes, hide the peaks, smoke in stormy trails across the 
snows of Higuerota. The Cordillera is gone from you 
as if it had dissolved itself into great piles of grey and 
black vapours that travel out slowly to seaward and 
vanish into thin air all along the front before the blazing 
heat of the day. The wasting edge of the cloud-bank 
always strives for, but seldom wins, the middle of the 
gulf. The sun — as the sailors say — is eating it up. 
Unless perchance a sombre thunder-head breaks away 
from the main body to career all over the gulf till it 
escapes into the offing beyond Azuera, where it bursts 
suddenly into flame and crashes like a sinister pirate- 
^hip of the air, hove-to above the horizon, engaging the 
sea. 

At night the body of clouds advancing higher up 
the sky smothers the whole quiet gulf below with an 
impenetrable darkness, in which the sound of the falling 
showers can be heard beginning and ceasing abruptly — 
now here, now there. Indeed, these cloudy nights are 
proverbial with the seamen along the whole west coast 
of a great continent. Sky, land, and sea disappear 
together out of the world when the Placido — as the say- 
ing is — goes to sleep under its black poncho. The few 
stars left below the seaward frown of the vault shine 
feebly as into the mouth of a black cavern. In its 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


7 


vastness your ship floats unseen under your feet, her 
sails flutter invisible above your head. The eye of God 
Himself — they add with grim profanity — could not 
find out what work a man’s hand is doing in there; and 
you would be free to call the devil to your aid with 
impunity if even his malice were not defeated by such a 
blind darkness. 

The shores on the gulf are steep-to all round; three un- 
inhabited islets basking in the sunshine just outside the 
cloud veil, and opposite the entrance to the harbour of 
Sulaco, bear the name of “The Isabels.” 

There is the Great Isabel; the Little Isabel, which is 
round; and Hermosa, which is the smallest. 

That last is no more than a foot high, and about seven 
paces across, a mere flat top of a grey rock which smokes 
like a hot cinder after a shower, and where no man 
would care to venture a naked sole before sunset. On 
the Little Isabel an old ragged palm, with a thick bulging 
trunk rough with spines, a very witch amongst palm 
trees, rustles a dismal bunch of dead leaves above the 
coarse sand. The Great Isabel has a spring of fresh 
water issuing from the overgrown side of a ravine. 
Resembling an emerald green wedge of land a mile long, 
and laid flat upon the sea, it bears two forest trees stand- 
ing close together, with a wide spread of shade at the 
foot of their smooth trunks. A ravine extending the 
whole length of the island is full of bushes; and pre- 
senting a deep tangled cleft on the high side spreads it- 
self out on the other into a shallow depression abutting 
on a small strip of sandy shore. 

From that low end of the Great Isabel the eye plunges 
through an opening two miles away, as abrupt as if 
chopped with an axe out of the regular sweep of the 
coast,Tight into the harbour of Sulaco. It is an oblong, 
lake-like piece of water. On one side the short wooded 


8 


NOSTROMO 


spurs and valleys of the Cordillera come down at right 
angles to the very strand; on the other the open view 
of the great Sulaco plain passes into the opal mystery 
of great distances overhung by dry haze. The town of 
Sulaco itself — tops of walls, a great cupola, gleams of 
white miradors in a vast grove of orange trees — lies 
between the mountains and the plain, at some little 
distance from its harbour and out of the direct line of 
sight from the sea. 


CHAPTER TWO 


The only sign of commercial activity within the 
harbour, visible from the beach of the Great Isabel, is 
the square blunt end of the wooden jetty which the 
Oceanic Steam Navigation Company (the O.S.N. of 
familiar speech) had thrown over the shallow part of the 
bay soon after they had resolved to make of Sulaco one 
of their ports of call for the Republic of Costaguana. 
The State possesses several harbours on its long sea- 
board, but except Cayta, an important place, all are 
either small and inconvenient inlets in *an iron-bound 
coast — like Esmeralda, for instance, sixty miles to the 
south — or else mere open roadsteads exposed to the 
winds and fretted by the surf. 

Perhaps the very atmospheric conditions which had 
kept away the merchant fleets of bygone ages induced 
the O.S.N. Company to violate the sanctuary of peace 
sheltering the calm existence of Sulaco. The variable 
airs sporting lightly with the vast semicircle of waters 
within the head of Azuera could not baffle the steam 
power of their excellent fleet. Year after year the 
black hulls of their ships had gone up and down 
the coast, in and out, past Azuera, past the Isabels, 
past Punta Mala — disregarding everything but the 
tyranny of time. Their names, the names of all 
mythology, became the household words of a coast that 
had never been ruled by the gods of Olympus. The 
Juno was known only for her comfortable cabins amid- 
ships, the Saturn for the geniality of her captain and 
the painted and gilt luxuriousness of her saloon, whereas 


10 


NOSTROMO 


the Ganymede was fitted out mainly for cattle transport, 
and to be avoided by coastwise passengers. The 
humblest Indian in the obscurest village on the coast 
was familiar with the Cerberus, a little black puffer with- 
out charm or living accommodation to speak of, whose 
mission was to creep inshore along the wooded beaches 
close to mighty ugly rocks, stopping obligingly before 
every cluster of huts to collect produce, down to three- 
pound parcels of indiarubber bound in a wrapper of dry 
grass. 

And as they seldom failed to account for the smallest 
package, rarely lost a bullock, and had never drowned 
a single passenger, the name of the O.S.N. stood 
very high for trustworthiness. People declared that 
under the Company’s care their lives and property 
were safer on the water than in their own houses on 
shore. 

The O.S.N.’s superintendent in Sulaco for the whole 
Costaguana section of the service was very proud of his 
Company’s standing. He resumed it in a saying which 
was very often on his lips, “We never make mistakes.” 
To the Company’s officers it took the form of a severe 
injunction, “We must make no mistakes. I’ll have 
no mistakes here, no matter what Smith may do at his 
end.” 

Smith, on whom he had never set eyes in his life, was 
the other superintendent of the service, quartered some 
fifteen hundred miles away from Sulaco. “Don’t talk 
to me of your Smith.” 

Then, calming down suddenly, he would dismiss the 
subject with studied negligence. 

“Smith knows no more of this continent than a 
baby.” 

“Our excellent Senor Mitchell” for the business and 
official world of Sulaco; “Fussy Joe” for the com- 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


11 


manders of the Company’s ships. Captain Joseph Mit- 
chell prided himself on his profound knowledge of men 
and things in the country — cosas de Costaguana. 
Amongst these last he accounted as most unfavourable 
to the orderly working of his Company the frequent 
changes of government brought about by revolutions 
of the military type. 

The political atmosphere of the Republic wajs 
generally stormy in these days. The fugitive patriots of 
the defeated party had the knack of turning up again on 
the coast with half a steameFs load of small arms and 
ammunition. Such resourcefulness Captain Mitchell 
considered as perfectly wonderful in view of their utter 
destitution at the time of flight. He had observed that 
“they never seemed to have enough change about them 
to pay for their passage ticket out of the country.” 
And he could speak with knowledge; for on a memo- 
rable occasion he had been called upon to save the life 
of a dictator, together with the lives of a few Sulaco 
officials — the political chief, the director of the customs, 
and the head of police — belonging to an overturned 
government. Poor Senor Ribiera (such was the dic- 
tator’s name) had come pelting eighty miles over 
mountain tracks after the lost battle of Socorro, m 
the hope of out-distancing the fatal news — which, of 
course, he could not manage to do on a lame mule. The 
animal, moreover, expired under him at the end of the 
Alameda, where the military band plays sometimes in 
the evenings between the revolutions. “Sir,” Captain 
Mitchell would pursue with portentous gravity, “the 
ill-timed end of that mule attracted attention to the 
unfortunate rider. His features were recognized by 
several deserters from the Dictatorial army amongst the 
rascally mob already engaged in smashing the windows 
of the Intendencia.” 


NOSTROMO 


12 

Early on the morning of that day the local authorities 
of Sulaco had fled for refuge to the O.S.N. Company’s 
offices, a strong building near the shore end of the jetty, 
leaving the town to the mercies of a revolutionary 
rabble; and as the Dictator was execrated by the 
populace on account of the severe recruitment law his 
necessities had compelled him to enforce during the 
struggle, he stood a good chance of being torn to 
pieces. Providentially, Nostromo — invaluable fellow 
— with some Italian workmen, imported to work upon 
the National Central Railway, was at hand, and 
managed to snatch him away — for the time at least. 
Ultimately, Captain Mitchell succeeded in taking every- 
body off in his own gig to one of the Company’s steamers 
— it was the Minerva — just then, as luck would have it, 
entering the harbour. 

He had to lower these gentlemen at the end of a rope 
out of a hole in the wall at the back, while the mob 
which, pouring out of the town, had spread itself all along 
the shore, howled and foamed at the foot of the building 
in front. He had to hurry them then the whole length 
of the jetty; it had been a desperate dash, neck or 
nothing — and again it was Nostromo, a fellow in a 
lliousand, who, at the head, this time, of the Company’s 
body of lightermen, held the jetty against the rushes of 
the rabble, thus giving the fugitives time to reach the 
gig lying ready for them at the other end with the 
Company’s flag at the stern. Sticks, stones, shots 
flew; knives, too, were thrown. Captain Mitchell 
exhibited willingly the long cicatrice of a cut over his 
left ear and temple, made by a razor-blade fastened to a 
stick — a weapon, he explained, very much in favour 
with the “worst kind of nigger out here.” 

Captain Mitchell was a thick, elderly man, wearing 
high, pointed collars and short side-whiskers, partial to 


13 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 

white waistcoats, and really very communicative under 
his air of pompous reserve. 

“These gentlemen,” he would say, staring with great 
solemnity, “had to run like rabbits, sir. I ran like a 
rabbit myself. Certain forms of death are — er — dis- 
tasteful to a — a — er — respectable man. They would 
have pounded me to death, too. A crazy mob, sir, does 
not discriminate. Under providence we owed our 
preservation to my Capataz de Cargadores, as they 
called him in the town, a man who, when I discovered 
his value, sir, was just the bos’n of an Italian ship, a 
big Genoese ship, one of the few European ships that 
ever came ter Sulaco with a general cargo before the 
building of the National Central. He left her on 
account of some very respectable friends he made here, 
his own countrymen, but also, I suppose, to better him- 
self. Sir, I am a pretty good judge of character. I 
engaged him to be the foreman of our lightermen, and 
caretaker of our jetty. That’s all that he was. But 
without him Senor Ribiera would have been a dead 
man. This Nostromo, sir, a man absolutely above 
reproach, became the terror of all the thieves in the 
town. We were infested, infested, overrun, sir, here at 
that time by ladrones and matreros, thieves and 
murderers from the whole province. On this occasion 
they had been flocking into Sulaco for a week past. 
They had scented the end, sir. Fifty per cent, of that 
murdering mob were professional bandits from the 
Campo, sir, but there wasn’t one that hadn’t heard of 
Nostromo. As to the town leperos, sir, the sight of his 
black whiskers and white teeth was enough for them. 
They quailed before him, sir. That’s what the force of 
character will do for you.” 

It could very well be said that it was Nostromo alone 
who saved the lives of these gentlemen. Captain Mit- 


14 


NOSTROMO 


chell, on his part, never left them till he had seen them 
collapse, panting, terrified, and exasperated, but safe, on 
the luxuriant velvet sofas in the first-class saloon of the 
Minerva, To the very last he had been careful to ad- 
dress the ex-Dictator as “Your Excellency.” 

“Sir, I could do no other. The man was down — 
ghastly, livid, one mass of scratches.” 

The Minerva never let go her anchor that call. The 
superintendent ordered her out of the harbour at once. 
No cargo could be landed, of course, and the passengers 
for Sulaco naturally refused to go ashore. They could 
hear the firing and see plainly the fight going on at the 
edge of the water. The repulsed mob devoted its 
energies to an attack upon the Custom House, a dreary, 
unfinished-looking structure with many windows two 
hundred yards away from the O.S.N. Offices, and the 
only other building near the harbour. Captain Mit- 
chell, after directing the commander of the Minerva 
to land “these gentlemen” in the first port of call out- 
side Costaguana, went back in his gig to see what could 
be done for the protection of the Company’s property. 
That and the property of the railway were preserved by 
the European residents; that is, by Captain Mitchell 
himself and the staff of engineers building the road, 
aided by the Italian and Basque workmen who rallied 
faithfully round their English chiefs. The Company’s 
lightermen, too, natives of the Republic, behaved very 
well under their Capataz. An outcast lot of very mixed 
blood, mainly negroes, everlastingly at feud with the 
other customers of low grog shops in the town, they 
embraced with delight this opportunity to settle their 
personal scores under such favourable auspices. There 
was not one of them that had not, at some time or 
other, looked with terror at Nostromo’s revolver poked 
very close at his face, or been otherwise daunted by 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


15 


Nostromo’s resolution. He was “much of a man,” 
their Capataz was, they said, too scornful in his temper 
ever to utter abuse, a tireless taskmaster, and the more 
to be feared because of his aloofness. And behold! 
there he was that day, at their head, condescending to 
make jocular remarks to this man or the other. 

Such leadership was inspiriting, and in truth all the 
harm the mob managed to achieve was to set fire to one 
— only one — stack of railway-sleepers, which, being 
creosoted, burned well. The main attack on the rail- 
way yards, on the O.S.N. Offices, and especially on the 
Custom House, whose strong room, it was well known, 
contained a large treasure in silver ingots, failed com- 
pletely. Even the little hotel kept by old Giorgio, 
standing alone halfway between the harbour and the 
town, escaped looting and destruction, not by a miracle, 
but because with the safes in view they had neglected it 
at first, and afterwards found no leisure to stop. Nos- 
tromo, with his Cargadores, was pressing them too hard 
then. 


CHAPTER THREE 


It might have been said that there he was only pro- 
tecting his own. From the first he had been admitted 
to live in the intimacy of the family of the hotel-keeper 
who was a countryman of his. Old Giorgio Viola, a 
Genoese with a shaggy white leonine head — often called 
simply “the Garibaldino” (as Mohammedans are 
called after their prophet) — was, to use Captain Mit- 
chell’s own words, the “respectable married friend” by 
whose advice Nostromo had left his ship to try for a run 
of shore luck in Costaguana. 

The old man, full of scorn for the populace, as your 
austere republican so often is, had disregarded the 
preliminary sounds of trouble. He went on that day 
as usual pottering about the “casa” in his slippers, 
muttering angrily to himself his contempt of the non- 
political nature of the riot, and shrugging his shoulders. 
In the end he was taken unawares by the out-rush of 
the rabble. It was too late then to remove his family, 
and, indeed, where could he have run to with the portly 
Signora Teresa and two little girls on that great plain? 
So, barricading every opening, the old man sat down 
sternly in the middle of the darkened cafS with an old 
shot-gun qn his knees. His wife sat on another chair by 
his side, muttering pious invocations to all the saints of 
the calendar. 

The old republican did not believe in saints, or in 
prayers, or in what he called “priest’s religion.” 
Liberty and Garibaldi were his divinities; but he 
16 


' THE SILVER OF THE MINE 17 

tolerated “superstition” in women, preserving in these 
matters a lofty and silent attitude. 

His two girls, the eldest fourteen, and the other two 
years younger, crouched on the sanded floor, on each 
side of the Signora Teresa, with their heads on their 
mother’s lap, both scared, but each in her own way, the 
dark-haired Idnda indignant and angry, the fair Giselle, 
the younger, bewildered and resigned. The Patrona 
removed her arms, which embraced her daughters, for a 
moment to cross herself and wring her hands hurriedly. 
She moaned a little louder. 

“Oh! Gian’ Battista, why art thou not here? Oh! 
why art thou not here?” 

She was not then invoking the saint himself, but 
calling upon Nostromo, whose patron he was. And 
Giorgio, motionless on the chair by her side, would be 
provoked by these reproachful and distracted appeals. 

“Peace, woman! Where’s the sense of it? There’s 
his duty,” he murmured in the dark; and she would 
retort, panting — 

“Eh! I have no patience. Duty! What of the 
woman who has been like a mother to him? I bent my 
knee to him this morning; don’t you go out, Gian’ 
Battista— stop in the house, Battistino — look at those 
two little innocent children!” 

Mrs. Viola was an Italian, too, a native of Spezzia, 
and though considerably younger than her husband, 
already middle-aged. She had a handsome face, whose 
complexion had turned yellow because the climate of 
Sulaco did not suit her at all. Her voice was a rich 
contralto. When, with her arms folded tight under her 
ample bosom, she scolded the squat, thick-legged China 
girls handling linen, plucking fowls, pounding corn in 
wooden mortars amongst the mud outbuildings at the 
back of the house, she could bring out such an im- 


18 


NOSTROMO 


passioned, vibrating, sepulchral note that the chained 
watch-dog bolted into his kennel with a great rattle. 
LuJs, a cinnamon-coloured mulatto with a sprouting 
moustache and thick, dark lips, would stop sweeping the 
cafe v^^ith a broom of palm-leaves to let a gentle shudder 
run down his spine. His languishing almond eyes 
would remain closed for a long time. 

This was the staff of the Casa Viola, but all these 
people had fled early that morning at the first sounds 
of the riot, preferring to hide on the plain rather than 
trust themselves in the house; a preference for which 
they were in no way to blame, since, whether true or not, 
it was generally believed in the town that the Garibal- 
dino had some money buried under the clay floor of the 
kitchen. The dog, an irritable, shaggy brute, barked 
violently and whined plaintively in turns at the back, 
running in and out of his kennel as rage or fear prompted 
him. 

Bursts of great shouting rose and died away, like wild 
gusts of wind on the plain round the barricaded house; 
the fitful popping of shots grew louder above the yelling. 
Sometimes there were intervals of unaccountable still- 
ness outside, and nothing could have been more gaily 
peaceful than the narrow bright lines of sunlight from 
the cracks in the shutters, ruled straight across the 
cafe over the disarranged chairs and tables to the wall 
opposite. Old Giorgio had chosen that bare, white- 
washed room for a retreat. It had only one window, 
and its only door swung out upon the track of thick 
dust fenced by aloe hedges between the harbour and 
the town, where clumsy carts used to creak along behind 
slow yokes of oxen guided by boys on horseback. 

In a pause of stillness Giorgio cocked his gun. The 
ominous sound wrung a low moan from the rigid figure 
of the woman sitting by his side. A sudden outbreak 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


19 


of defiant yelling quite near the house sank all at once 
to a confused murmur of growls. Somebody ran along; 
the loud catching of his breath was heard for an instant 
passing the door; there were hoarse mutters and foot- 
steps near the wall; a shoulder rubbed against the 
shutter, effacing the bright lines of sunshine pencilled 
across the whole breadth of the room. Signora Teresa’s 
arms thrown about the kneeling forms of her daughters 
embraced them closer with a convulsive pressure. 

The mob, driven away from the Custom House, had 
broken up into several bands, retreating across the plain 
in the direction of the town. The subdued crash of 
irregular volleys fired in the distance was answered by 
faint yells far away. In the intervals the single shots 
rang feebly, and the low, long, white building blinded in 
every window seemed to be the centre of a turmoil 
widening in a great circle about its closed-up silence. 
But the cautious movements and whispers of a routed 
party seeking a momentary shelter behind the wall 
made the darkness of the room, striped by threads of 
quiet sunlight, alight with evil, stealthy sounds. The 
Violas had them in their ears as though invisible 
ghosts hovering about their chairs had consulted in 
mutters as to the advisability of setting fire to this 
foreigner’s casa. 

It was trying to the nerves. Old Viola had risen 
slowly, gun in hand, irresolute, for he did not see how he 
could prevent them. Already voices could be heard 
talking at the back. Signora Teresa was beside herself 
with terror. 

“Ah! the traitor! the traitor!” she mumbled, almost 
inaudibly. “Now we are going to be burnt; and I 
bent my knee to him. No! he must run at the heels of 
his English.” 

She seemed to think that Nostromo’s mere presence 


20 


NOSTROMO 


in the house would have made it perfectly safe. So far, 
she, too, was under the spell of that reputation the Capa- 
taz de Cargadores had made for himself by the water- 
side, along the railway line, with the English and with 
the populace of Sulaco. To his face, and even against 
her husband, she invariably affected to laugh it to scorn, 
sometimes good-naturedly, more often with a curious 
bitterness. But then women are unreasonable in their 
opinions, as Giorgio used to remark calmly on fitting 
occasions. On this occasion, with his gun held at 
ready before him, he stooped down to his wife’s head, 
and, keeping his eyes steadfastly on the barricaded 
door, he breathed out into her ear that Nostromo would 
have been powerless to help. What could two men 
shut up in a house do against twenty or more bent upon 
setting fire to the roof.^ Gian’ Battista was thinking of 
the casa all the time, he was sure. 

“He think of the casa! He!” gasped Signora Viola, 
crazily. She struck her breast with her open hands. 
“I know him. He thinks of nobody but himself.’ 

A discharge of firearms near by made her throw her 
head back and close her eyes. Old Giorgio set his 
teeth hard under his white moustache, and his eyes be- 
gan to roll fiercely. Several bullets struck the end of 
the wall together; pieces of plaster could be heard 
falling outside; a voice screamed “Here they come!” 
and after a moment of uneasy silence there was a rush 
of running feet along the front. 

Then the tension of old Giorgio’s attitude relaxed, 
and a smile of contemptuous relief came upon his lips 
of an old fighter with a leonine face. These were not a 
people striving for justice, but thieves. Even to de- 
fend his life against them was a sort of degradation for 
a man who had been one of Garibaldi’s immortal 
thousand in the conquest of Sicily. He had an im- 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


21 


mense scorn for this outbreak of scoundrels and leperos, 
who did not know the meaning of the word “liberty.” 

He grounded his old gun, and, turning his head, 
glanced at the coloured lithograph of Garibaldi in a 
black frame on the white wall; a thread of strong sun- 
shine cut it perpendicularly. His eyes, accustomed to 
the luminous twilight, made out the high colouring of 
the face, the red of the shirt, the outlines of the square 
shoulders, the black patch of the Bersagliere hat with 
cock’s feathers curling over the crown. An immortal 
hero! This was your liberty; it gave you not only life, 
but immortality as well ! 

For that one man his fanaticism had suffered no 
diminution. In the moment of relief from the ap- 
prehension of the greatest danger, perhaps, his family 
had been exposed to in all their wanderings, he had 
turned to the picture of his old chief, first and only, 
then laid his hand on his wife’s shoulder. 

’The children kneeling on the floor had not moved. 
Signora Teresa opened her eyes a little, as though he 
had awakened her from a very deep and dreamless 
slumber. Before he had time in his deliberate way to 
say a reassuring word she jumped up, with the children 
clinging to her, one on each side, gasped for breath, and 
let out a hoarse shriek. 

It was simultaneous with the bang of a violent blow 
struck on the outside of the shutter. They could hear 
suddenly the snorting of a horse, the restive tramping of 
hoofs on the narrow, hard path in front of the house; the 
toe of a boot struck at the shutter again; a spur jingled 
at every blow, and an excited voice shouted, “Hola! 
hola, in there!” 


CHAPTER FOUR 


All the morning Nostromo had kept his eye from afar 
on the Casa Viola, even in the thick of the hottest scrim- 
mage near the Custom House. “If I see smoke rising 
over there,” he thought to himself, “they ai:e lost.” 
Directly the mob had broken he pressed with a small 
band of Italian workmen in that direction, which, in- 
deed, was the shortest line towards the town. That 
part of the rabble he was pursuing seemed to think of 
making a stand under the house; a volley fired by his 
followers from behind an aloe hedge made the rascals 
fly. In a gap chopped out for the rails of the harbour 
branch line Nostromo appeared, mounted on his 
silver-grey mare. He shouted, sent after them one 
shot from his revolver, and galloped up to the cafe 
window. He had an idea that old Giorgio would 
choose that part of the house for a refuge. 

His voice had penetrated to them, sounding breath- 
lessly hurried: “Hola! Vecchio! O, Vecchio! Is it all 
well with you in there.^” 

“You see ” murmured old Viola to his wife. 

Signora Teresa was silent now. Outside Nostromo 
laughed. 

“I can hear the padrona is not dead.” 

“ You have done your best to kill me with fear,” cried 
Signora Teresa. She wanted to say something more, 
but her voice failed her. 

Linda raised her eyes to her face for a moment, but 
old Giorgio shouted apologetically — 

“She is a little upset.” 


22 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 23 

Outside Nostromo shouted back with another 
laugh — 

“She cannot upset me.” 

Signora Teresa found her voice. 

“It is what I say. You have no heart — and you 
have no conscience, Gian’ Battista ” 

They heard him wheel his horse away from the 
shutters. The party he led were babbling excitedly in 
Italian and Spanish, inciting each other to the pursuit. 
He put himself at their head, crying, “Avanti!” 

“He has not stopped very long with us. There is no 
praise from strangers to be got here,” Signora Teresa 
said, tragically. “Avanti! Yes! That is all he cares 
for. To be first somewhere — somehow — to be first 
with these English. They will be showing him to 
everybody. ‘This is our Nostromo!”’ She laughed 
ominously. “What a name! What is that.^ Nos- 
tromo He would take a name that is properly no 
word from them.” 

Meantime Giorgio, with tranquil movements, had 
been unfastening the door; the flood of light fell on 
Signora Teresa, with her two girls gathered to her side, 
a picturesque woman in a pose of maternal exaltation. 
Behind her the wall was dazzlingly white, and the 
crude colours of the Garibaldi lithograph paled in the 
sunshine. 

Old Viola, at the door, moved his arm upwards as if 
referring all his quick, fleeting thoughts to the picture 
of his old chief on the wall. Even when he was cooking 
for the “Signori Inglesi” — the engineers (he was a 
famous cook, though the kitchen was a dark place) — he 
was, as it were, under the eye of the great man who had 
led him in a glorious struggle where, under the walls 
of Gaeta, tyranny would have expired for ever had it not 
been for that accursed Piedmontese race of kings and 


24 


NOSTROMO 


ministers. When sometimes a frying-pan caught fire 
during a delicate operation with some shredded onions, 
and the old man was seen backing out of the doorway, 
swearing and coughing violently in an acrid cloud of 
smoke, the name of Cavour — the arch intriguer sold to 
kings and tyrants — could be heard involved in im- 
precations against the China girls, cooking in general, 
and the brute of a country where he was reduced to live 
for the love of liberty that traitor had strangled. 

Then Signora Teresa, all in black, issuing from 
another door, advanced, portly and anxious, inclining 
her fine, black-browed head, opening her arms, and 
crying in a profound tone — 

“Giorgio! thou passionate man! Misericordia 
Divina! In the sun like this! He will make himself 
ill.” 

At her feet the hens made off in all directions, with 
immense strides; if there were any engineers from up 
the line staying in Sulaco, a young English face or two 
would appear at the billiard-room occupying one end of 
the house; but at the other end, in the cafe, Luis, the 
mulatto, took good care not to show himself.* The 
Indian girls, with hair like flowing black manes, and 
dressed only in a shift and short petticoat, stared dully 
from under the square-cut fringes on their foreheads; 
the noisy frizzling of fat had stopped, the fumes floated 
upwards in sunshine, a strong smell of burnt onions 
hung in the drowsy heat, enveloping the house; and the 
eye lost itself in a vast flat expanse of grass to the west, 
as if the plain between the Sierra overtopping Sulaco 
and the coast range away there towards Esmeralda had 
been as big as half the world. 

Signora Teresa, after an impressive pause, remon- 
strated — 

“Eh, Giorgio! Leave Cavour alone and take care of 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


25 


yourself now we are lost in this country all alone 
with the two children, because you cannot live under a 
king.” 

And while she looked at him she would sometimes put 
her hand hastily to her side with a short twitch of her 
fine lips and a knitting of her black, straight eyebrows 
like a fiicker of angry pain or an angry thought on her 
handsome, regular features. 

It was pain; she suppressed the twinge. It had come 
to her first a few years after they had left Italy to emi- 
grate to America and settle at last in Sulaco after 
wandering from town to town, trying shopkeeping in a 
small way here and there; and once an organized enter- 
prise of fishing — in Maldonado — for Giorgio, like the 
great Garibaldi, had been a sailor in his time. 

Sometimes she had no patience with pain. For years 
its gnawing had been part of the landscape embracing 
the glitter of the harbour under the wooded spurs of the 
range; and the sunshine itself was heavy and dull — 
heavy with pain — not like the sunshine of her girlhood, 
in which middle-aged Giorgio had wooed her gravely 
and passionately on the shores of the gulf of Spezzia. 

“You go in at once, Giorgio,” she directed. “One 
would think you do not wish to have any pity on me — 
with four Signori Inglesi staying in the house.” 

“Va bene, va bene,” Giorgio would mutter. 

He obeyed. The Signori Inglesi would require their 
midday meal presently. He had been one of the 
immortal and invincible band of liberators who had 
made the mercenaries of tyranny fly like chaff before a 
hurricane, “un uragano terribile.” But that was before 
he was married and had children; and before tyranny 
had reared its head again amongst the traitors who had 
imprisoned Garibaldi, his hero. 

There were three doors in the front of the house, and 


26 


NOSTROMO 


each afternoon the Garibaldino could be seen at one or 
another of them with his big bush of white hair, his 
arms folded, his legs crossed, leaning back his leonine 
head against the lintel, and looking up the wooded 
slopes of the foothills at the snowy dome of Higuerota. 
The front of his house threw off a black long rectangle 
of shade, broadening slowly over the soft ox-cart track. 
Through the gaps, chopped out in the oleander hedges, 
the harbour branch railway, laid out temporarily on the 
level of the plain, curved away its shining parallel rib- 
bons on a belt of scorched and withered grass within 
sixty yards of the end of the house. In the evening 
the empty material trains of flat cars circled round the 
dark green grove of Sulaco, and ran, undulating slightly 
with white jets of steam, over the plain towards the 
Casa Viola, on their way to the railway yards by 
the harbour. The Italian drivers saluted him from the 
foot-plate with raised hand, while the negro brakesmen 
sat carelessly on the brakes, looking straight forward, 
with the rims of their big hats flapping in the wind. In 
return Giorgio would give a slight sideways jerk of the 
head, without unfolding his arms. 

On this memorable day of the riot his arms were not 
folded on his chest. His hand grasped the barrel of the 
gun grounded on the threshold ; he did not look up once 
at the white dome of Higuerota, whose cool purity 
seemed to hold itself aloof from a hot earth. His eyes 
examined the plain curiously. Tall trails of dust sub- 
sided here and there. In a speckless sky the sun hung 
clear and blinding. Knots of men ran headlong; others 
made a stand; and the irregular rattle of firearms 
came rippling to his ears in the fiery, still air. Single 
figures on foot raced desperately. Horsemen galloped 
towards each other, wheeled round together, separated 
at speed. Giorgio saw one fall, rider and horse dis- 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


27 


appearing as if they had galloped into a chasm, and the 
movements of the animated scene were like the passages 
of a violent game played upon the plain by dwarfs 
mounted and on foot, yelling with tiny throats, under 
the mountain that seemed a colossal embodiment of 
silence. Never before had Giorgio seen this bit of plain 
so full of active life; his gaze could not take in all its 
details at once; he shaded his eyes with his hand, till 
suddenly the thundering of many hoofs near by startled 
him. 

A troop of horses had broken out of the fenced pad- 
dock of the Railway Company. They came on like a 
whirlwind, and dashed over the line snorting, kicking, 
squealing in a compact, piebald, tossing mob of bay, 
brown, grey backs, eyes staring, necks extended, nos- 
trils red, long tails streaming. As soon as they had 
leaped upon the road the thick dust flew upwards from 
under their hoofs, and within six yards of Giorgio only 
a brown cloud with vague forms of necks and cruppers 
rolled by, making the soil tremble on its passage. 

Viola coughed, turning his face away from the dust, 
and shaking his head slightly. 

“ There will be some horse-catching to be done before 
to-night,” he muttered. 

In the square of sunlight falling through the door 
Signora Teresa, kneeling before the chair, had bowed 
her head, heavy with a twisted mass of ebony hair 
streaked with silver, into the palm of her hands. The 
black lace shawl she used to drape about her face had 
dropped to the ground by her side. The two girls had 
got up, hand-in-hand, in short skirts, their loose hair 
falling in disorder. The younger had thrown her arm 
across her eyes, as if afraid to face the light. Linda, 
with her hand on the other’s shoulder, stared fearlessly. 
Viola looked at his children. 


28 


NOSTROMO 


The sun brought out the deep lines on his face, and, 
energetic in expression, it had the immobility of a 
carving. It was impossible to discover what he thought. 
Bushy grey eyebrows shaded his dark glance. 

“Well! And do you not pray like your mother 

Linda pouted, advancing her red lips, which were 
almost too red; but she had admirable eyes, brown, with 
a sparkle of gold in the irises, full of intelligence and 
meaning, and so clear that they seemed to throw a glow 
upon her thin, colourless face. There were bronze 
glints in the sombre clusters of her hair, and the eye- 
lashes, long and coal black, made her complexion appear 
still more pale. 

“Mother is going to offer up a lot of candles in the 
church. She always does when Nostromo has been 
away fighting. I shall have some to carry up to the 
Chapel of the Madonna in the Cathedral.” 

She said all this quickly, with great assurance, in an 
animated, penetrating voice. Then, giving her sister’s 
shoulder, a slight shake, she added — 

“And she will be made to carry one, too!” 

“Why made?” inquired Giorgio, gravely. “Does 
she not want to?” 

“She is timid,” said Linda, with a little burst of 
laughter. “People notice her fair hair as she goes along 
with us. They call out after her, ‘Look at the Rubia! 
Look at the Rubiacita!’ They call out in the streets. 
She is timid.” 

“And you? You are not timid — eh?” the father 
pronounced, slowly. 

She tossed back all her dark hair. 

“Nobody calls out after me.” 

Old Giorgio contemplated his children thoughtfully. 
There was two years difference between them. They 
had been born to him late, years after the boy had died. 


29 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 

Had he lived he would have been nearly as old as 
Gian’ Battista — he whom the English called Nostromo; 
but as to his daughters, the severity of his temper, his 
advancing age, his absorption in his memories, had pre- 
vented his taking much notice of them. He loved his 
children, but girls belong more to the mother, and much 
of his affection had been expended in the worship and 
service of liberty. 

When quite a youth he had deserted from a ship trad- 
ing to La Plata, to enlist in the navy of Montevideo, 
then under the command of Garibaldi. Afterwards, 
in the Italian legion of the Republic struggling against 
the encroaching tyranny of Rosas, he had taken part, 
on great plains, on the banks of immense rivers, in the 
fiercest fighting perhaps the world had ever known. 
He had lived amongst men who had declaimed about 
liberty, suffered for liberty, died for liberty, with a 
desperate exaltation, and with their eyes turned 
towards an oppressed Italy. His own enthusiasm had 
been fed on scenes of carnage, on the examples of lofty 
devotion, on the din of armed struggle, on the inflamed 
language of proclamations. He had never parted from 
the chief of his choice — the fiery apostle of independence 
— keeping by his side in America and in Italy till after 
the fatal day of Aspromonte, when the treachery of 
kings, emperors, and ministers had been revealed to the 
world in the wounding and imprisonment of his hero — a 
catastrophe that had instilled into him a gloomy doubt 
of ever being able to understand the ways of Divine 
justice. 

He did not deny it, however. It required patience, 
he would say. Though he disliked priests, and would 
not put his foot inside a church for anything, he believed 
in God. Were not the proclamations against tyrants 
addressed to the peoples in the name of God and liberty? 


30 


NOSTROMO 


“God for men — religions for women,” he muttered 
sometimes. In Sicily, an Englishman who had turned 
up in Palermo after its evacuation by the army of the 
king, had given him a Bible in Italian — the publication 
of the British and Foreign Bible Society, bound in a 
dark leather cover. In periods of political adversity, 
in the pauses of silence when the revolutionists issued 
no proclamations, Giorgio earned his living with the 
first work that came to hand — as sailor, as dock labourer 
on the quays of Genoa, once as a hand on a farm in 
the hills above Spezzia — and in his spare time he 
studied the thick volume. He carried it with him into 
battles. Now it was his only reading, and in order not 
to be deprived of it (the print was small) he had con- 
sented to accept the present of a pair of silver-mounted 
spectacles from Senora Emilia Gould, the wife of 
the Englishman who managed the silver mine in 
the mountains three leagues from the town. She was 
the only Englishwoman in Sulaco. 

Giorgio Viola had a great consideration for the 
English. This feeling, born on the battlefields of 
Uruguay, was forty years old at the very least. Several 
of them had poured their blood for the cause of freedom 
in America, and the first he had ever known he re- 
membered by the name of Samuel; he commanded a 
negro company under Garibaldi, during the famous 
siege of Montevideo, and died heroically with his 
negroes at the fording of the Boyana. He, Giorgio, had 
reached the rank of ensign — alferez — and cooked for the 
general. Later, in Italy, he, with the rank of lieutenant, 
rode with the staff and still cooked for the general. He 
had cooked for him in Lombardy through the whole 
campaign; on the march to Rome he had lassoed his 
beef in the Campagna after the American manner; he 
had been wounded in the defence of the Roman Re- 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


31 


public; he was one of the four fugitives who, with the 
general, carried out of the woods the inanimate body of 
the general’s wife into the farmhouse where she died, 
exhausted by the hardships of that terrible retreat. 
He had survived that disastrous time to attend his 
general in Palermo when the Neapolitan shells from the 
castle crashed upon the town. He had cooked for him 
on the field of Volturno after fighting all day. And 
everywhere he had seen Englishmen in the front rank 
of the army of freedom. He respected their nation be- 
cause they loved Garibaldi. Their very countesses 
and princesses had kissed the general’s hands in London, 
it was said. He could well believe it; for the nation was 
noble, and the man was a saint. It was enough to look 
once at his face to see the divine force of faith in him 
and his great pity for all that was poor, suffering, and 
oppressed in this world. 

The spirit of self-forgetfulness, the simple devotion to 
a vast humanitarian idea which inspired the thought 
and stress of that revolutionary time, had left its mark 
upon Giorgio in a sort of austere contempt for all 
personal advantage. This man, whom the lowest class 
in Sulaco suspected of having a buried hoard in his 
kitchen, had all his life despised money. The leaders of 
his youth had lived poor, had died poor. It had been a 
habit of his mind to disregard to-morrow. It was 
engendered partly by an existence of excitement, 
adventure, and wild warfare. But mostly it was a 
matter of principle. It did not resemble the careless- 
ness of a condottiere, it was a puritanism of conduct, 
born of stern enthusiasm like the puritanism of religion. 

This stern devotion to a cause had cast a gloom upon 
Giorgio’s old age. It cast a gloom because the cause 
seemed lost. Too many kings and emperors flourished 
yet in the world which God had meant for the people. 


S2 NOSTROMO 

He was sad because of his simplicity. Though always 
ready to help his countrymen, and greatly respected by 
the Italian emigrants wherever he lived (in his exile he 
called it), he could not conceal from himself that they 
cared nothing for the wrongs of down-trodden nations. 
They listened to his tales of war readily, but seemed to 
ask themselves what he had got out of it after all. 
There was nothing that they could see. “We wanted 
nothing, we suffered for the love of all humanity!” he 
cried out furiously sometimes, and the powerful voice, 
the blazing eyes, the shaking of the white mane, the 
brown, sinewy hand pointing upwards as if to call 
heaven to witness, impressed his hearers. After the old 
man had broken off abruptly with a jerk of the head and 
a movement of the arm, meaning clearly, “But what’s 
the good of talking to you.^” they nudged each other. 
There was in old Giorgio an energy of feeling, a personal 
quality of conviction, something they called “terri- 
bilita”^ — “an old lion,” they used to say of him. Some 
slight incident, a chance word would set him off talking 
on the beach to the Italian fishermen of Maldonado, in 
the little shop he kept afterwards (in Valparaiso) to his 
countrymen customers; of an evening, suddenly, in the 
cafe at one end of the Casa Viola (the other was re- 
served for the English engineers) to the select clientele of 
engine-drivers and foremen of the railway shops. 

With their handsome, bronzed, lean faces, shiny 
black ringlets, glistening eyes, broad-chested, bearded, 
sometimes a tiny gold ring in the lobe of the ear, 
the aristocracy of the railway works listened to him, 
turning away from their cards or dominoes. Here 
and there a fair-haired Basque studied his hand 
meantime, waiting without protest. No native of 
Costaguana intruded there. This was the Italian 
stronghold. Even the Sulaco policemen on a night 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


33 


patrol let their horses pace softly by, bending low in the 
saddle to glance through the window at the heads in a 
fog of smoke; and the drone of old Giorgio’s declamatory 
narrative seemed to sink behind them into the plain. 
Only now and then the assistant of the chief of police, 
some broad-faced, brown little gentleman, with a great 
deal of Indian in him, would put in an appearance. 
Leaving his man outside with the horses he advanced 
with a confident, sly smile, and without a word up to the 
long trestle table. He pointed to one of the bottles 
on the shelf; Giorgio, thrusting his pipe into his mouth 
abruptly, served him in person. Nothing would be 
heard but the slight jingle of the spurs. His glass 
emptied j he would take a leisurely, scrutinizing look all 
round the room, go out, and ride away slowly, circling 
towards the town. 


CHAPTER FIVE 


In this way only was the power of the local authori- 
ties vindicated amongst the great body of strong- 
limbed foreigners who dug the earth, blasted the 
rocks, drove the engines for the “progressive and 
patriotic undertaking.” In these very words eighteen 
months before the Excellentissimo Senor don Vincente 
Ribiera, the Dictator of Costaguana, had described the 
National Central Railway in his great speech at the 
turning of the first sod. 

He had come on purpose to Sulaco, and there was a 
one-o’clock dinner-party, a convite offered by the O.S.N. 
Company on board the Juno after the function on shore. 
Captain Mitchell had himself steered the cargo lighter, 
all draped with flags, which, in tow of the J uno’s steam 
launch, took the Excellentissimo from the jetty to the 
ship. Everybody of note in Sulaco had been invited — 
the one or two foreign merchants, all the representatives 
of the old Spanish families then in town, the great 
owners of estates on the plain, grave, courteous, simple 
men, caballeros of pure descent, with small hands and 
feet, conservative, hospitable, and kind. The Oc- 
cidental Province was their stronghold; their Blanco 
party had triumphed now; it was their President- 
Dictator, a Blanco of the Blancos, who sat smiling 
urbanely between the representatives of two friendly 
foreign powers. They had come with him from Sta. 
Marta to countenance by their presence the enterprise 
in which the capital of their countries was engaged. 

The only lady of that company was Mrs. Gould, the 

34 


35 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 

wife of Don Carlos, the administrator of the San Tome 
silver mine. The ladies of Sulaco were not advanced 
enough to take part in the public life to that extent. 
They had come out strongly at the great ball at the 
Intendencia the evening before, but Mrs. Gould alone 
had appeared, a bright spot in the group of black coats 
behind the President-Dictator, on the crimson cloth- 
covered stage erected under a shady tree on the shore 
of the harbour, where the ceremony of turning the first 
sod had taken place. She had come off in the cargo 
lighter, full of notabilities, sitting under the flutter of 
gay flags, in the place of honour by the side of Captain 
Mitchell, who steered, and her clear dress gave the only 
truly festive note to the sombre gathering in the long, 
gorgeous saloon of the Juno. 

The head of the chairman of the railway board (from 
London), handsome and pale in a silvery mist of white 
hair and clipped beard, hovered near her shoulder 
attentive, smiling, and fatigued. The journey from 
London to Sta. Marta in mail boats and the special 
carriages of the Sta. Marta coast-line (the only railway 
so far) had been tolerable — even pleasant — quite toler- 
able. But the trip over the mountains to Sulaco was 
another sort of experience, in an old diligencia over im- 
passable roads skirting awful precipices. 

“We have been upset twice in one day on the brink of 
very deep ravines,” he was telling Mrs. Gould in an 
undertone. “And when we arrived here at last I don’t 
know what we should have done without your hos- 
pitality. What an out-of-the-way place Sulaco is! — 
and for a harbour, too! Astonishing!” 

“Ah, but we are very proud of it. It used to be 
historically important. The highest ecclesiastical court, 
for two viceroyalties, sat here in the olden time,” she 
instructed him with animation. 


36 


NOSTROMO 


“I am impressed. I didn’t mean to be disparaging. 
You seem very patriotic.” 

“The place is lovable, if only by its situation. Per- 
haps you don’t know what an old resident I am.” 

“How old, I wonder,” he murmured, looking at her 
with a slight smile. Mrs. Gould’s appearance was 
made youthful by the mobile intelligence of her face. 
“We can’t give you your ecclesiastical court back again; 
but you shall have more, steamers, a railway, a tele- 
graph-cable — a future in the great world which is worth 
infinitely more than any amount of ecclesiastical past. 
You shall be brought in touch with something greater 
than two viceroyalties. But I had no notion that a 
place on a sea-coast could remain so isolated from the 
world. If it had been a thousand miles inland now — most 
remarkable! Has anything ever happened here for a 
hundred years before to-day?” 

While he talked in a slow, humorous tone, she kept 
her little smile. Agreeing ironically, she assured him 
that certainly not — nothing ever happened in Sulaco. 
Even the revolutions, of which there had been two 
in her time, had respected the repose of the place. 
Their course ran in more populous southern parts 
of the Republic, and the great valley of Sta. Marta, 
which was like one great battlefield of the parties, 
with the possession of the capital for a prize and 
an outlet to another ocean. They were more advanced 
over there. Here in Sulaco they heard only the echoes 
of these great questions, and, of course, their official 
world changed each time, coming to them over their 
rampart of mountains which he himself had traversed 
in an old diligencia, with such a risk to life and limb. 

The chairman of the railway had been enjoying her 
hospitality for several days, and he was really grateful 
for it. It was only since he had left Sta. Marta that he 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


37 


had utterly lost touch with the feeling of European life 
on the background of his exotic surroundings. In the 
capital he had been the guest of the Legation, and had 
been kept busy negotiating with the members of Don 
Vincente’s Gove^niiient — cultured men, men to whom 
the conditions of civilized business were not unknown. 

What concerned him most at the time was the 
acquisition of land for the railway. In the Sta. Marta 
Valley, where there was already one line in existence, 
the people were tractable, and it was only a matter of 
price. A commission had been nominated to fix the 
values, and the difficulty resolved itself into the judi- 
cious influencing of the Commissioners. But in Sulaco — 
the Occidental Province for whose very development 
the railway was intended — there had been trouble. It 
had been lying for ages ensconced behind its natural 
barriers, repelling modern enterprise by the precipices 
of its mountain range, by its shallow harbour opening 
into the everlasting calms of a gulf full of clouds, by 
the benighted state of mind of the owners of its fertile 
territory — all these aristocratic old Spanish families, all 
those Don Ambrosios this and Don Fernandos that, who 
seemed actually to dislike and distrust the coming of the 
railway over their lands. It had happened that some of 
the surveying parties scattered all over the province had 
been warned off with threats of violence. In other cases 
outrageous pretensions as to price had been raised. 
But the man of railways prided himself on being equal to 
every emergency. Since he was met by the inimical 
sentiment of blind conservatism in Sulaco he would 
meet it by sentiment, too, before taking his stand on his 
right alone. The Government was bound to carry out 
its part of the contract with the board of the new 
railway company, even if it had to use force for the 
purpose. But he desired nothing less than an armed 


38 


NOSTROMO 


disturbance in the smooth working of his plans. They 
were much too vast and far-reaching, and too promis- 
ing to leave a stone unturned ; and so he imagined to get 
the President-Dictator over there on a tour of cere- 
monies and speeches, culminating^in a great function 
at the turning of the first sod by the harbour shore. 
After all he was their own creature — that Don Vincente. 
He was the embodied triumph of the best elements in 
the State. These were facts, and, unless facts meant 
nothing. Sir John argued to himself, such a man’s in- 
fiuence must be real, and his personal action would 
produce the conciliatory effect he required. He had 
succeeded in arranging the trip with the help of a very 
clever advocate, who was known in Sta. Marta as the 
agent of the Gould silver mine, the biggest thing in 
Sulaco, and even in the whole Republic. It was indeed 
a fabulously rich mine. Its so-called agent, evidently a 
man of culture and ability, seemed, without official 
position, to possess an extraordinary influence in the 
highest Government spheres. He was able to assure 
Sir John that the President-Dictator would make the 
journey. He regretted, however, in the course of the 
same conversation, that General Montero insisted upon 
going, too. 

General Montero, whom the beginning of the struggle 
had found an obscure army captain employed on the 
wild eastern frontier of the State, had thrown in his lot 
with the Ribiera party at a moment when special 
circumstances had given that small adhesion a for- 
tuitous importance. The fortunes of war served him 
marvellously, and the victory of Rio Seco (after a day 
of desperate fighting) put a seal to his success. At the 
end he emerged General, Minister of War, and the 
military head of the Blanco party, although there was 
nothing aristocratic in his descent. Indeed, it was said 


39 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 

that he and his brother, orphans, had been brought up 
by the munificence of a famous European traveller, in 
whose service their father had lost his life. Another 
story was that their father had been nothing but a char- 
coal burner in the woods, and their motlier a baptised 
Indian woman from the far interior. 

However that might be, the Costaguana Press was in 
the habit of styling Montero’s forest march from his 
commandancia to join the Blanco forces at the begin- 
ning of the troubles, the “most heroic military exploit 
of modern times.” About the same time, too, his 
brother had turned up from Europe, where he had gone 
apparently as secretary to a consul. Having, however, 
collected a small band of outlaws, he showed some 
talent as guerilla chief and had been rewarded at the 
pacification by the post of Military Commandant of the 
capital. 

The Minister of War, then, accompanied the Dicta- 
tor. The board of the O.S.N. Company, working hand- 
in-hand with the railway people for the good of the Re- 
public, had on this important occasion instructed 
Captain Mitchell to put the mail-boat Juno at the 
disposal of the distinguished party. Don Vincente, 
journeying south from Sta. Marta, had embarked at 
Cayta, the principal port of Costaguana, and came to 
Sulaco by sea. But the chairman of the railway 
company had courageously crossed the mountains in a 
ramshackle diligencia, mainly for the purpose of meeting 
his engineer-in-chief engaged in the final survey of the 
road. 

For all the indifference of a man of affairs to nature, 
whose hostility can always be overcome by the re- 
sources of finance, he could not help being impressed 
by his surroundings during his halt at the surveying 
camp established at the highest point his railway was to 


40 


NOSTROMO 


reach. He spent the night there, arriving just too late 
to see the last dying glow of sunlight upon the snowy 
flank of Higuerota. Pillared masses of black basalt 
framed like ap open portal a portion of the white field 
lying aslant against the west. In the transparent air 
of the high altitudes everything seemed very near, 
steeped in a clear stillness as in an imponderable liquid ; 
and with his ear ready to catch the first sound of the 
expected diligencia the engineer-in-chief, at the door of a 
hut of rough stones, had contemplated the changing 
hues on the enormous side of the mountain, thinking 
that in this sight, as in a piece of inspired music, there 
could be found together the utmost delicacy of shaded 
expression and a stupendous magnificence of effect. 

Sir John arrived too late to hear the magnificent and 
inaudible strain sung by the sunset amongst the high 
peaks of the Sierra. It had sung itself out into the 
breathless pause of deep dusk before, climbing down the 
fore wheel of the diligencia with stiff limbs, he shook 
hands with the engineer. 

They gave him his dinner in a stone hut like a cubical 
boulder, with no door or windows in its two openings; 
a bright fire of sticks (brought on muleback from the 
first valley below) burning outside, sent in a wavering 
glare; and two candles in tin candlesticks — lighted, it 
was explained to him, in his honour — stood on a sort of 
rough camp table, at which he sat on the right hand of 
the chief. He knew how to be amiable; and the young 
men of the engineering staff, for whom the surveying of 
the railway track had the glamour of the first steps on 
the path of life, sat there, too, listening modestly, with 
their smooth faces tanned by the weather, and very 
pleased to witness so much affability in so great a man. 

Afterwards, late at night, pacing to and fro outside, 
he had a long talk with his chief engineer. He knew 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


41 


him well of old. This was not the first, undertaking in 
which their gifts, as elementally different as fire and 
water, had worked in conjunction. From the contact 
of these two personalities, who had not the same vision 
of the world, there was generated a power for the wonld’s 
service — a subtle force that could set in motion mighty 
machines, men’s muscles, and awaken also in human 
breasts an unbounded devotion to the task. Of the 
young fellows# at the table, to whom the survey of the 
track was like the tracing of the path of life, more than 
one would be called to meet death before the work was 
done. But the work would be done: the force would be 
almost as strong as a faith. Not quite, however. In 
the silence of the sleeping camp upon the moonlit 
plateau forming the top of the pass like the floor of a 
vast arena surrounded by the basalt walls of precipices, 
two strolling figures in thick ulsters stood still, and the 
voice of the engineer pronounced distinctly the words — 

“ We can’t move mountains ! ” 

Sir John, raising his head to follow the pointing 
gesture, felt the full force of the words. The white 
Higuerota soared out of the shadows of rock and earth 
like a frozen bubble under the moon. All was still, till 
near by, behind the wall of a corral for the camp ani- 
mals, built roughly of loose stones in the form of a 
circle, a pack mule stamped his forefoot and blew 
heavily twice. 

The engineer-in-chief had used the phrase in answer 
to the chairman’s tentative suggestion that the tracing 
of the line could, perhaps, be altered in deference to the 
prejudices of the Sulaco landowners. The chief engi- 
neer believed that the obstinacy of men was the lesser 
obstacle. Moreover, to combat that they had the great 
influence of Charles Gould, whereas tunnelling under 
Higuerota would have been a colossal undertaking. 


42 


NOSTROMO 


“Ah, yes! Gould. What sort of a man is he?” 

Sir John had heard much of Charles Gould in Sta. 
Marta, and wanted to know more. The engineer-in- 
chief assured him that the administrator of the San 
Tome silver mine had an immense influence over all 
these Spanish Dons. He had also one of the best 
houses in Sulaco, and the Gould hospitality was be- 
yond all praise. 

“They received me as if they had known me for 
years,” he said. “The little lady is kindness per- 
sonifled. I stayed with them for a month. He helped 
me to organize the surveying parties. His practical 
ownership of the San Tome silver mine gives him a 
special position. He seems to have the ear of every 
provincial authority apparently, and, as I said, he can 
wind all the hidalgos of the province round his little 
finger. If you follow his advice the difficulties will fall 
away, because he wants the railway. Of course, you 
must be careful in what you say. He’s English, and 
besides he must be immensely wealthy. The Holroyd 
house is in with him in that mine, so you rpay im- 
agine ” 

He interrupted himself as, from before one of the 
little fires burning outside the low wall of the corral, 
arose the figure of a man wrapped in a poncho up to the 
neck. The saddle which he had been using for a pillow 
made a dark patch on the ground against the red glow of 
embers. 

“I shall see Holroyd himself on my way back through 
the States,” said Sir John. “I’ve ascertained that he, 
too, wants the railway.” 

The man who, perhaps disturbed by the proximity of 
the voices, had arisen from the ground, struck a match 
to light a cigarette. The flame showed a bronzed, 
black- whiskered face, a pair of eyes gazing straight; 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


43 


then, rearranging his wrappings, he sank full length and 
laid his head again on the saddle. 

“That’s our camp-master, whom I must send back to 
Sulaco now we are going to carry our survey into the 
Sta. Marta Valley,” said the engineer. “A most useful 
fellow, lent me by Captain Mitchell of the O.S.N. 
Company. It was very good of Mitchell. Charles 
Gould told me I couldn’t do better than take advantage 
of the offer. He seems to know how to rule all these 
muleteers and peons. We had not the slightest trouble 
with our people. He shall escort your diligencia right 
into Sulaco with some of our railway peons. The road 
is bad. To have him at hand may save you an upset 
or two. He promised me to take care of your person 
all the way down as if you were his father.” 

This camp-master was the Italian sailor whom all the 
Europeans in Sulaco, following Captain Mitchell’s 
mispronunciation, were in the habit of calling Nos- 
tromo. And indeed, taciturn and ready, he did take 
excellent care of his charge at the bad parts of the road, 
as Sir John himself acknowledged to Mrs. Gould after- 
wards. 


CHAPTER SIX 


At that time Nostromo had been already long enough 
in the country to raise to the highest pitch Captain 
Mitchell’s opinion of the extraordinary value of his 
discovery. Clearly he was one of those invaluable 
subordinates whom to possess is a legitimate cause of 
boasting. Captain Mitchell plumed himself upon his 
eye for men — but he was not selfish — and in the in- 
nocence of his pride was already developing that mania 
for ‘Tending you my Capataz de Cargadores” which 
was to bring Nostromo into personal contact, sooner or 
later, with every European in Sulaco, as a sort of univer- 
sal factotum — a prodigy of eflSciency in his own sphere 
of life. 

“The fellow is devoted to me, body and soul!” 
Captain Mitchell was given to aflSrm; and though no- 
body, perhaps, could have explained why it should be 
so, it was impossible on a survey of their relation to 
throw doubt on that statement, unless, indeed, one 
were a bitter, eccentric character like Dr. Monygham — 
for instance — whose short, hopeless laugh expressed 
somehow an immense mistrust of mankind. Not that 
Dr. Monygham was a prodigal either of laughter or of 
words. He was bitterly taciturn when at his best. At 
his worst people feared the open scornfulness of his 
tongue. Only Mrs. Gould could keep his unbelief in 
men’s motives within due bounds; but even to her 
(on an occasion not connected with Nostromo, and in a 
tone which for him was gentle), even to her, he had said 
once, “ Really, it is most unreasonable to demand that a 

44 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


45 


man should think of other people so much better than 
he is able to think of himself.” 

And Mrs. Gould had hastened to drop the subject. 
There were strange rumours of the English doctor. 
Years ago, in the time of Guzman Bento, he had been 
mixed up, it was whispered, in a conspiracy which was 
betrayed and, as people expressed it, drowned in blood. 
His hair had turned grey, his hairless, seamed face was 
of a brick-dust colour; the large check pattern of his 
flannel shirt and his old stained Panama hat were an 
established defiance to the conventionalities of Sulaco. 
Had it not been for the immaculate cleanliness of his 
apparel he might have been taken for one of those 
shiftless Europeans that are a moral eyesore to the 
respectability of a foreign colony in almost every exotic 
part of the world. The young ladies of Sulaco, adorn- 
ing with clusters of pretty faces the balconies along the 
Street of the Constitution, when they saw him pass, 
with his limping gait and bowed head, a short linen 
jacket drawn on carelessly over the flannel check shirt, 
would remark to each other, “Here is the Senor doctor 
going to call on Dona Emilia. He has got his little 
coat on.” The inference was true. Its deeper meaning 
was hidden from their simple intelligence. Moreover, 
they expended no store of thought on the doctor. He 
was old, ugly, learned^ — and a little “loco” — mad, if not 
a bit of a sorcerer, as the common people suspected him 
of being. The little white jacket was in reality a con- 
cession to Mrs. Gould’s humanizing influence. The 
doctor, with his habit of sceptical, bitter speech, had 
no other means of showing his profound respect for 
the character of the woman who was known in the 
country as the English Senora. He presented this 
tribute very seriously indeed; it was no trifle for a man 
of his habits. Mrs. Gould felt that, too, perfectly. 


46 


NOSTROMO 


She would never have thought of imposing upon him 
this marked show of deference. 

She kept her old Spanish house (one of the finest 
specimens in Sulaco) open for the dispensation of the 
small graces of existence. She dispensed them with 
simplicity and charm because she was guided by an 
alert perception of values. She was highly gifted in the 
art of human intercourse which consists in delicate 
shades of self-forgetfulness and in the suggestion of 
universal comprehension. Charles Gould (the Gould 
family, established in Costaguana for three generations, 
always went to England for their education and for 
their wives) imagined that he had fallen in love with a 
girl’s sound common sense like any other man, but these 
were not exactly the reasons why, for instance, the 
whole surveying camp, from the youngest of the young 
men to their mature chief, should have found occasion 
to allude to Mrs. Gould’s house so frequently amongst 
the high peaks of the Sierra. She would have pro- 
tested that she had done nothing for them, with a low 
laugh and a surprised widening of her grey eyes, had 
anybody told her how convincingly she was remem- 
bered on the edge of thfe snow-line above Sulaco. But 
directly, with a little capable air of setting her wits to 
work, she would have found an explanation. “Of 
course, it was such a surprise for these boys to find any 
sort of welcome here. And I suppose they are home- 
sick. I suppose everybody must be always just a little 
homesick.” 

She was always sorry for homesick people. 

Born in the country, as his father before him, spare 
and tall, , with a flaming moustache, a neat chin, clear 
blue eyes, auburn hair, and a thin, fresh, red face, 
Charles Gould looked like a new arrival from 'over the 
sea. His grandfather had fought in the cause of 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


47 


independence under Bolivar, in that famous English 
legion which on the battlefield of Carabobo had been 
saluted by the great Liberator as Saviours of his 
country. One of Charles Gould’s uncles had been the 
elected President of that very province of Sulaco (then 
called a State) in the days of Federation, and after- 
wards had been put up against the wall of a church and 
shot by the order of the barbarous Unionist general, 
Guzman Bento. It was the same Guzman Bento who, 
becoming later Perpetual President, famed for his ruth- 
less ^and cruel tyranny, reached his apotheosis in the 
popular legend of a sanguinary land-haunting spectre 
whose body had been carried off by the devil in person 
from the brick mausoleum in the nave of the Church of 
Assumption in Sta. Marta. Thus, at least, the priests 
explained its disappearance to the barefooted multi- 
tude that streamed in, awestruck, to gaze at the hole in 
the side of the ugly box of bricks before the great altar. 

Guzman Bento of cruel memory had put to death 
great numbers of people besides Charles Gould’s uncle; 
but with a relative martyred in the cause of aristocracy, 
the Sulaco Oligarchs (this was the phraseology of Guz- 
man Bento’s time; now they were called Blancos, and 
had given up the federal idea), which meant the families 
of pure Spanish descent, considered Charles as one of 
themselves. With such a family record, no one could 
be more of a Costaguanero than Don Carlos Gould; but 
his aspect was so characteristic that in the talk of 
common people he was just the Inglez— the English- 
man of Sulaco. He looked more English than a casual 
tourist, a sort of heretic pilgrim, however, quite un- 
known in Sulaco. He looked more English than the 
last arrived batch of young railway engineers, than 
anybody out of the hunting-field pictures in the num- 
bers of Punch reaching his wife’s drawing-room two 


48 


NOSTROMO 


months or so after date. It astonished you to hear him 
talk Spanish (Castilian, as the natives say) or the 
Indian dialect of the country-people so naturally. His 
accent had never been English; but there was something 
so indelible in all these ancestral Goulds — ^liberators, 
explorers, coffee planters, merchants, revolutionists — 
of Costaguana, that he, the only representative of the 
third generation in a continent possessing its own style 
of horsemanship, went on looking thoroughly English 
even on horseback. This is not said of him in the 
mocking spirit of the Llaneros — men of the great plains 
— who think that no one in the world knows how to sit 
a horse but themselves. Charles Gould, to use the 
suitably lofty phrase, rode like a centaur. Riding 
for him was not a special form of exercise; it was a 
natural faculty, as walking straight is to all men sound 
of mind and limb; but, all the same, when cantering 
beside the rutty ox-cart track to the mine he looked in 
his English clothes and with his imported saddlery as 
though he had come this moment to Costaguana at his 
easy swift pasotrote, straight out of some green meadow 
at the other side of the world. 

His way would lie along the old Spanish road — the 
Camino Real of popular speech — the only remaining 
vestige of a fact and name left by that royalty old 
Giorgio Viola hated, and whose very shadow had de- 
parted from the land; for the big equestrian statue of 
Charles IV at the entrance of the Alameda, towering 
white against the trees, was only known to the folk 
from the country and to the beggars of the town that 
slept on the steps around the pedestal, as the Horse 
of Stone. The other Carlos, turning off to the left 
with a rapid clatter of hoofs on the disjointed pave- 
ment — Don Carlos Gould, in his English clothes, looked 
as incongruous, but much more at home than the kingly 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


49 


cavalier reining in his steed on the pedestal above the 
sleeping leperos, with his marble arm raised towards 
the marble rim of a plumed hat. 

The weather-stained effigy of the mounted king, with 
its vague suggestion of a saluting gesture, seemed to 
present an inscrutable breast to the political changes 
which had robbed it of its very name; but neither did 
the other horseman, well known to the people, keen 
and alive on his well-shaped, slate-coloured beast with 
a white eye, wear his heart on the sleeve of his English 
coat. His mind preserved its steady poise as if shel- 
tered in the passionless stability of private and public 
decencies at home in Europe. He accepted with a like 
calm the shocking manner in which the Sulaco ladies 
smothered their faces with pearl powder till they 
looked like white plaster casts with beautiful living eyes, 
the peculiar gossip of the town, and the continuous 
political changes, the constant “saving of the country,” 
which to his wife seemed a puerile and bloodthirsty 
game of murder and rapine played with terrible earnest- 
ness by depraved children. In the early days of her 
Costaguana life, the little lady used to clench her hands 
with exasperation at not being able to take the public 
affairs of the country as seriously as the incidental 
atrocity of methods deserved. She saw in them a 
comedy of naive pretences, but hardly anything genuine 
except her own appalled indignation. Charles, very 
quiet and twisting his long moustaches, would decline to 
discuss them at all. Once, however, he observed to 
her gently — 

“My dear, you seem to forget that I was born here.” 

These few words made her pause as if they had been 
a sudden revelation. Perhaps the mere fact of being 
born in the country did make a difference. She had a 
great confidence in her husband; it had always been 


50 


NOSTROMO 


very great. He had struck her imagination from the 
first by his unsentimentalism, by that very quietude of 
mind which she had erected in her thought for a sign of 
perfect competency in the business of living. Don 
Jose Avellanos, their neighbour across the street, a 
statesman, a poet, a man of culture, who had repre- 
sented his country at several European Courts (and 
had suffered untold indignities as a state prisoner in the 
time of the tyrant Guzman Bento), used to declare in 
Dona Emilia’s drawing-room that Carlos had all the 
English qualities of character with a truly patriotic 
heart. 

Mrs. Gould, raising her eyes to her husband’s thin, 
red and tan face, could not detect the slightest quiver of 
a feature at what he must have heard said of his 
patriotism. Perhaps he had just dismounted on his 
return from the mine; he was English enough to dis- 
regard the hottest hours of the day. Basilio, in a livery 
of white linen and a red sash, had squatted for a moment 
behind his heels to unstrap the heavy, blunt spurs in 
the patio; and then the Senor Administrator would go 
up the staircase into the gallery. Rows of plants in 
pots, ranged on the balustrade between the pilasters 
of the arches, screened the corridor with their leaves and 
flowers from the quadrangle below, whose paved space 
is the true hearthstone of a South American house, 
where the^ quiet hours of domestic life are marked by 
the shifting of light and shadow on the flagstones. 

Senor Avellanos was in the habit of crossing the patio 
at five o’clock almost every day. Don Jose chose to 
come over at tea-time because the English rite at Dona 
Emilia’s house reminded him of the time he lived in 
London as Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of 
St. James. He did not like tea; and, usually, rocking 
his American chair, his neat little shiny boots crossed on 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


51 


the foot-rest, he would talk on and on with a sort of 
complacent virtuosity wonderful in a man of his age, 
while he held the cup in his hands for a long time. His 
close-cropped head was perfectly white; his eyes coal- 
black. 

On seeing Charles Gould step into the sala he would 
nod provisionally and go on to the end of the oratorial 
period. Only then he would say — 

“ Carlos, my friend, you have ridden from San Tome 
in the heat of the day. Always the true English activity. 
No.? What?” 

He drank up all the tea at once in one draught. This 
performance was invariably followed by a slight shudder 
and a low, involuntary “br-r-r-r,” which was not covered 
by the hasty exclamation, “Excellent!” 

Then giving up the empty cup into his young friend’s 
hand, extended with a smile, he continued to expatiate 
upon the patriotic nature of the San Tome mine for the 
simple pleasure of talking fluently, it seemed, while his 
reclining body jerked backwards and forwards in a 
rocking-chair of the sort exported from the United 
States. The ceiling of the largest drawing-room of the 
Casa Gould extended its white level far above his head. 
The loftiness dwarfed the mixture of heavy, straight- 
backed Spanish chairs of brown wood with leathern 
seats, and European furniture, low, and cushioned all 
over, like squat little monsters gorged to bursting with 
steel springs and horsehair. There were knick-knacks 
on little tables, mirrors let into the wall above marble 
consoles, square spaces of carpet under the two groups 
of armchairs, each presided over by a deep sofa; smaller 
rugs scattered all over the floor of red tiles; three 
windows from ceiling down to the ground, opening on a 
balcony, and flanked by the perpendicular folds of the 
dark hangings. The stateliness of ancient days lingered 


52 


NOSTROMO 


between the four high, smooth walls, tinted a delicate 
primrose-colour; and Mrs. Gould, with her little head 
and shining coils of hair, sitting in a cloud of muslin and 
lace before a slender mahogany table, resembled a fairy 
posed lightly before dainty philtres dispensed out of 
vessels of silver and porcelain. 

Mrs. Gould knew the history of the San Tome mine. 
Worked in the early days mostly by means of lashes on 
the backs of slaves, its yield had been paid for in its own 
weight of human bones. Whole tribes of Indians had 
perished in the exploitation; and then the mine was 
abandoned, since with this primitive method it had 
ceased to make a profitable return, no matter how many 
corpses were thrown into its maw. Then it became for- 
gotten. It was rediscovered after the War of Indepen- 
dence. An English company obtained the right to 
work it, and found so rich a vein that neither the ex- 
actions of successive governments, nor the periodical 
raids of recruiting officers upon the population of paid 
miners fhey had created, could discourage their per- 
severance. But in the end, during the long turmoil of 
pronunciamentos that followed the death of the famous 
Guzman Bento, the native miners, incited to revolt by 
the emissaries sent out from the capital, had risen upon 
their English chiefs and murdered them to a man. The 
decree of confiscation which appeared immediately 
afterwards in the Diario Official, published in Sta. 
Marta, began with the words: “Justly incensed at the 
grinding oppression of foreigners, actuated by sordid 
motives of gain rather than by love for a country where 
they come impoverished to seek their fortunes, the 
mining population of San Tome, etc. . . and 

ended with the declaration: “The chief of the State has 
resolved to exercise to the full his power of clemency. 
The mine, which by every law, international, human. 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


53 


and divine, reverts now to the Government as national 
property, shall remain closed till the sword drawn for 
the sacred defence of liberal principles has accomplished 
its mission of securing the happiness of our beloved 
country.” 

And for many years this was the last of the San Tome 
mine. What advantage that Government had ex- 
pected from the spoliation, it is impossible to tell now. 
Costaguana was made with difficulty to pay a beggarly 
money compensation to the families of the victims, and 
then the matter dropped out of diplomatic despatches. 
But afterwards another Government bethought itself of 
that valuable asset. It was an ordinary Costaguana 
Government — the fourth in six years — but it judged of 
its opportunities sanely. It remembered the San Tome 
mine with a secret conviction of its worthlessness in 
their own hands, but with an ingenious insight into the 
various uses a silver mine can be put to, apart from the 
sordid process of extracting the metal from under the 
ground. The father of Charles Gould, for a long 
time one of the most wealthy merchants of Costaguana, 
had already lost a considerable part of his fortune in 
forced loans to the successive Governments. He was 
a man of calm judgment, who never dreamed of pressing 
his claims; and when, suddenly, the perpetual con- 
cession of the San Tome mine was offered to him in full 
settlement, his alarm became extreme. He was versed 
in the ways of Governments. Indeed, the intention of 
this affair, though no doubt deeply meditated in the 
closet, lay open on the surface of the document pre- 
sented urgently for his signature. The third and most 
important clause stipulated that the concession-holder 
should pay at once to the Government five years’ 
royalties on the estimated output of the mine. 

Mr. Gould, senior, defended himself from this fatal 


54 


NOSTROMO 


favour with many arguments and entreaties, but with- 
out success. He knew nothing of mining; he had no 
means to put his concession on the European market; 
the mine as a working concern did not exist. The 
buildings had been burnt down, the mining plant had 
been destroyed, the mining population had disappeared 
from the neighbourhood years and years ago; the very 
road had vanished under a flood of tropical vegetation 
as effectually as if swallowed by the sea; and the main 
gallery had fallen in within a hundred yards from the 
entrance. It was no longer an abandoned mine; it was 
a wild, inaccessible, and rocky gorge of the Sierra, where 
vestiges of charred timber, some heaps of smashed 
bricks, and a few shapeless pieces of rusty iron could 
have been found under the matted mass of thorny 
creepers covering the ground. Mr. Gould, senior, did 
not desire the perpetual possession of that desolate 
locality; in fact, the mere vision of it arising before his 
mind in the still watches of the night had the power to 
exasperate him into hours of hot and agitated insomnia. 

It so happened, however, that the Finance Minister of 
the time was a man to whom, in years gone by, Mr. 
Gould had, unfortunately, declined to grant some small 
pecuniary assistance, basing his refusal on the ground 
that the applicant was a notorious gambler and cheat, 
besides being more than half suspected of a robbery 
with violence on a wealthy ranchero in a remote country 
district, where he was actually exercising the function 
of a judge. Now, after reaching his exalted position, 
that politician had proclaimed his intention to repay 
evil with good to Senor Gould — the poor man. He 
affirmed and reaffirmed this resolution in the drawing- 
rooms of Sta. Marta, in a soft and implacable voice, and 
with such malicious glances that Mr. Gould’s best 
friends advised him earnestly to attempt no bribery 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


55 


to get the matter dropped. It would have been useless. 
Indeed, it would not have been a very safe proceeding. 
Such was also the opinion of a stout, loud-voiced lady of 
French extraction, the daughter, she said, of an officer 
of high rank {officier superieur de Varmee), who was 
accommodated with lodgings within the walls of a 
secularized convent next door to the Ministry of 
Finance. That florid person, when approached on be- 
half of Mr. Gould in a proper manner, and with a 
suitable present, shook her head despondently. She 
was good-natured, and her despondency was genuine. 
She imagined she could not take money in consideration 
of something she could not accomplish. The friend of 
Mr. Gould, charged with the delicate mission, used to 
say afterwards that she was the only honest person 
closely or remotely connected with the Government 
he had ever met. “No go,’’ she had said with a cavalier, 
husky intonation which was natural to her, and using 
turns of expression more suitable to a child of parents 
unknown than to the orphaned daughter of a general 
officer. “No; it’s no go. Pas moyen, mon gargon. 
C^est dommage, tout de meme. Ah ! zut ! Je ne vole 
pas mon monde. Je ne suis pas ministre — moi I Vous 
pouvez emporter votre petit sacP 

For a moment, biting her carmine lip, she deplored 
inwardly the tyranny of the rigid principles governing 
the sale of her influence in high places. Then, signifi- 
cantly, and with a touch of impatience, ''Allez,” she 
added, dites bien a votre bonhomme — entendez-vous ? — 
qu'ilfaut avaler la piluleP 

After such a warning there was nothing for it but to 
sign and pay. Mr. Gould had swallowed the pill, and 
it was as though it had been compounded of some subtle 
poison that acted directly on his brain. He became at 
once mine-ridden, and as he was well read in light 


56 


NOSTROMO 


literature it took to his mind the form of the Old Man 
of the Sea fastened upon his shoulders. He also began 
to dream of vampires. Mr. Gould exaggerated to him- 
self the disadvantages of his new position, because he 
viewed it emotionally. His position in Costaguana 
was no worse than before. But man is a desperately 
conservative creature, and the extravagant novelty of 
this outrage upon his purse distressed his sensibilities. 
Everybody around him was being robbed by the 
grotesque and murderous bands that played their game 
of governments and revolutions after the death of 
Guzman Bento. His experience had taught him that, 
however short the plunder might fall of their legitimate 
expectations, no gang in possession of the Presidential 
Palace would be so incompetent as to suffer itself to be 
baffled by the want of a pretext. The first casual 
colonel of the barefooted army of scarecrows that came 
along was able to expose with force and precision to any 
mere civilian his titles to a sum of 10,000 dollars; the 
while his hope would be immutably fixed upon a 
gratuity, at any rate, of no less than a thousand. Mr. 
Gould knew that very well, and, armed. with resigna- 
tion, had waited for better times. But to be robbed 
under the forms of legality and business was intolerable 
to his imagination. Mr. Gould, the father, had one 
fault in his sagacious and honourable character: he 
attached too much importance to form. It is a failing 
common to mankind, whose views are tinged by preju- 
dices. There was for him in that affair a malignancy of 
perverted justice which, by means of a moral shock, 
attacked his vigorous physique. “It will end by 
killing me,” he used to afflrm many times a day. And, 
in fact, since that time he began to suffer from fever, 
from liver pains, and mostly from a worrying inability 
to think of anything else. The Finance Minister could 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


57 


have formed no conception of the profound subtlety of 
his revenge. Even Mr. Gould’s letters to his fourteen- 
year-old boy Charles, then away in England for his 
education, came at last to talk of practically nothing but 
the mine. He groaned over the injustice, the persecu- 
tion, the outrage of that mine; he occupied whole pages 
in the exposition of the fatal consequences attaching to 
the possession of that mine from every point of view, 
with every dismal inference, with words of horror at the 
apparently eternal character of that curse. For the 
Concession had been granted to him and his descen- 
dants for ever. He implored his son never to return to 
Costaguana, never to claim any part of his inheritance 
there, because it was tainted by the infamous Con- 
cession; never to touch it, never to approach it, to for- 
get that America existed, and pursue a mercantile 
career in Europe. And each letter ended with bitter 
self-reproaches for having stayed too long in that 
cavern of thieves', intriguers, and brigands. 

To be told repeatedly that one’s future is blighted 
because of the possession of a silver mine is not, at the 
age of fourteen, a matter of prime importance as to its 
main statement; but in its form it is calculated to excite 
a certain amount of wonder and attention. In course 
of time the boy, at first only puz zled by the angry 
jeremiads, but rather sorry for his dad, began to turn 
the matter over in his mind in such moments as he 
could spare from play and study. In about a year he 
had evolved from the lecture of the letters a definite 
conviction that there was a silver mine in the Sulaco 
province of the Republic of Costaguana, where poor 
Uncle Harry had been shot by soldiers a great many 
years before. There was also connected closely with 
that mine a thing called the “iniquitous Gould Con- 
cession,” apparently written on a paper which his 


58 


NOSTROMO 


father desired ardently to ‘‘tear and fling into the 
faces” of presidents, members of judicature, and 
ministers of State. And this desire persisted, though 
the names of these people, he noticed, seldom remained 
the same for a whole year together. This desire (since 
the thing was iniquitous) seemed quite natural to the 
boy, though why the affair was iniquitous he did not 
know. Afterwards, with advancing wisdom, he man- 
aged to clear the plain truth of the business from the 
fantastic intrusions of the Old Man of the Sea, vampires, 
and ghouls, which had lent to his father’s correspon- 
dence the flavour of a gruesome Arabian Nights tale. 
In the end, the growing youth attained to as close an 
intimacy with the San Tome mine as the old man who 
wrote these plaintive and enraged letters on the other 
side of the sea. He had been made several times al- 
ready to pay heavy fines for neglecting to work the 
mine, he reported, besides other sums extracted from 
him on account of future royalties, on the ground that a 
man with such a valuable concession in his pocket could 
not refuse his financial assistance to the Government of 
the Republic. The last of his fortune was passing 
away from him against worthless receipts, he wrote, in a 
rage, whilst he was being pointed out as an individual 
who had known how to secure enormous advantages 
from the necessities of his country. And the young 
man in Europe grew more and more interested in that 
thing which could provoke such a tumult of words and 
passion. 

He thought of it every day; but he thought of it 
without bitterness. It might have been an unfortunate 
affair for his poor dad, and the whole story threw a 
queer light upon the social and political life of Costa- 
guana. The view he took of it was sympathetic to his 
father, yet calm and reflective. His personal feelings 


59 


THE Silver of the mine 

had not been outraged, and it is difficult to resent with 
proper and durable indignation the physical or mental 
anguish of another organism, even if that other organ- 
ism is one’s own father. By the time he was twenty 
Charles Gould had, in his turn, fallen under the spell 
of the San Tome mine. But it was anotlier form of 
enchantment, more suitable to his youth, into whose 
magic formula there entered hope, vigour, and self- 
confidence, instead of weary indignation and despair. 
Left after he was twenty to his own guidance (except 
for the severe injunction not to return to Costaguana), 
he had pursued his studies in Belgium and France with 
the idea of qualifying for a mining engineer. But this 
scientific aspect of his labours remained vague and 
imperfect in his mind. Mines had acquired for him a 
dramatic interest. He studied their peculiarities from 
a personal point of view, too, as one would study the 
varied characters of men. He visited them as one 
goes with curiosity to call upon remarkable persons. 
He visited mines in Germany, in Spain, in Cornwall. 
Abandoned workings had for him strong fascination. 
Their desolation appealed to him like the sight of hu- 
man misery, whose causes are varied and profound. 
They might have been worthless, but also they might 
have been misunderstood. His future wife was the 
first, and perhaps the only person to detect this secret 
mood which governed the profoundly sensible, almost 
voiceless attitude of this man towards the world of 
material things. And at once her delight in him, linger- 
ing with half-open wings like those birds that cannot rise 
easily from a flat level, found a pinnacle from which to 
soar up into the skies. 

They had become acquainted in Italy, where the 
future Mrs. Gould was staying with an old and pale 
aunt who, years before, had married a middle-aged. 


60 


NOSTROMO ' 

impoverished Italian marquis. She now mourned that 
man, who had known how to give up his life to the 
independence and unity of his country, who had known 
how to be as enthusiastic in his generosity as the young- 
est of those who fell for that very cause of which old 
Giorgio Viola was a drifting relic, as a broken spar is 
suffered to float away disregarded after a naval victory. 
The Marchesa led a still, whispering existence, nun-like 
in her black robes and a white band over the forehead, 
in a corner of the first floor of an ancient and ruinous 
palace, whose big, empty halls downstairs sheltered 
under their painted ceilings the harvests, the fowls, and 
even the cattle, together with the whole family of the 
tenant farmer. 

The two young people had met in Lucca. After that 
meeting Charles Gould visited no mines, though they 
went together in a carriage, once, to see some marble 
quarries, where the work resembled mining in so far 
that it also was the tearing of the raw material of 
treasure from the earth. Charles Gould did not open 
his heart to her in any set speeches. He simply went 
on acting and thinking in her sight. This is the true 
method of sincerity. One of his frequent remarks 
was, “I think sometimes that poor father takes a 
wrong view of that San Tome business.” And they 
discussed that opinion long and earnestly, as if they 
could influence a mind across half the globe; but in 
reality they discussed it because the sentiment of love 
can enter into any subject and live ardently in remote 
phrases. For this natural reason these discussions were 
precious to Mrs. Gould in her engaged state. Charles 
feared that Mr. Gould, senior, was wasting his strength 
and making himself ill by his efforts to get rid of the 
Concession. “I fancy that this is not the kind of 
handling it requires,” he mused aloud, as if to himself. 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


61 


And when she wondered frankly that a man of character 
should devote his energies to plotting and intrigues, 
Charles would remark, with a gentle concern that 
understood her wonder, “You must not forget that he 
was born there.” 

She would set her quick mind to work upon that, and 
then make the inconsequent retort, which he accepted 
as perfectly sagacious, because, in fact, it was so 

“Well, and you? You were born there, too.” 

He knew his answer. 

“That’s different. I’ve been away ten years. Dad 
never had such a long spell; and it was more than thirty 
years ago.” 

She was the first person to whom he opened his lips 
after receiving the news of his father’s death. 

“It has killed him!” he said. 

He had walked straight out of town with the news, 
straight out before him in the noonday sun on the white 
road, and his feet had brought him face to face with 
her in the hall of the ruined palazzo, a room mag- 
nificent and naked, with here and there a long strip of 
damask, black with damp and age, hanging down on a 
bare panel of the wall. It was furnished with exactly 
one gilt armchair, with a broken back, and an octagon 
columnar stand bearing a heavy marble vase orna- 
mented with sculptured masks and garlands of flowers, 
and cracked from top to bottom. Charles Gould was 
dusty with the white dust of the road lying on his boots, 
on his shoulders, on his cap with two peaks. Water 
dripped from under it all over his face, and he grasped a 
thick oaken cudgel in his bare right hand. 

She went very pale under the roses of her big straw 
hat, gloved, swinging a clear sunshade, caught just as 
she was going out to meet him at the bottom of the hill, 
where three poplars stand near the wall of a vineyard. 


62 


NOSTROMO 


“It has killed him!” he repeated. “He ought to 
have had many years yet. We are a long-lived family.” 

She was too startled to say anything; he was contem- 
plating with a penetrating and motionless stare the 
cracked marble urn as though he had resolved to fix its 
shape for ever in his memory. It was only when, turn- 
ing suddenly to her, he blurted out twice, “I’ve come 

to you I’ve come straight to you ,” without 

being able to finish his phrase, that the great pitifulness 
of that lonely and tormented death in Costaguana came 
to her with the full force of its misery. He caught hold 
of her hand, raised it to his lips, and at that she dropped 
her parasol to pat him on the cheek, murmured “Poor 
boy,” and began to dry her eyes under the downward 
curve of her hat-brim, very small in her simple, white 
frock, almost like a lost child crying in the degraded 
grandeur of the noble hall, while he stood by her, again 
perfectly motionless in the contemplation of the marble 
urn. 

Afterwards they went out for a long walk, which was 
silent till he exclaimed suddenly — 

“Yes. But if he had only grappled with it in a 
proper way!” 

And . then they stopped. Everywhere there were 
long shadows lying on the hills, on the roads, on the 
enclosed fields of olive trees; the shadows of poplars, of 
wide chestnuts, of farm buildings, of stone walls; and in 
mid-air the sound of a bell, thin and alert, was like the 
throbbing pulse of the sunset glow. Her lips were 
slightly parted as though in surprise that he should not 
be looking at her with his usual expression. His usual 
expression was unconditionally approving and atten- 
tive. He was in his talks with her the most anxious and 
deferential of dictators, an attitude that pleased her 
immensely. It affirmed her power without detracting 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


63 


from his dignity. That slight girl, with her little feet, 
little hands, little face attractively overweighted by 
great coils of hair; with a rather large mouth, whose 
mere parting seemed to breathe upon yoU the fragrance" 
of frankness and generosity, had the fastidious soul of 
an experienced woman. She was, before all things and 
all flatteries, careful of her pride in the object of her 
choice. But now h^ was actually not looking at her at 
all; and his expression was tense and irrational, as is 
natural in a man who elects to stare at nothing past a 
young girl’s head. 

‘‘Well, yes. It was iniquitous. They corrupted 
him thoroughly, the poor old boy. Oh! why wouldn’t 
he let me go back to him.^ But now I shall know how 
to grapple with this.” 

After pronouncing these words with immense as- 
surance, he glanced down at her, and at once fell a prey 
to distress, incertitude, and fear. 

The only thing he wanted to know now, he said, was 
whether she did love him enough — whether she would 
have the courage to go with him so far away.f^ He put 
these questions to her in a voice that trembled with 
anxiety — for he was a determined man. 

She did. She would. And immediately the future 
hostess of all the Europeans in Sulaco had the physical 
experience of the earth falling away from under her. It 
vanished completely, even to the very sound of the bell. 
When her feet touched the ground again, the bell was 
still ringing in the valley; she put her hands up to her 
hair, breathing quickly, and glanced up and down the 
stony lane. It was reassuringly empty. Meantime, 
Charles, stepping with one foot into a dry and dusty 
ditch, picked up the open parasol, which had bounded 
away from them with a martial sound of drum taps. 
He handed it to her soberly, a little crestfallen. 


64 


NOSTROMO 


They turned back, and after she had slipped her hand 
on his arm, the first words he pronounced were — 

“It’s lucky that we shall be able to settle in a coast 
town. You’ve heard its name. It is Sulaco. I am so 
glad poor father did get that house. He bought a big 
house there years ago, in order that there should always 
be a Casa Gould in the principal town of what used to be 
called the Occidental Province. I lived there once, as a 
small boy, with my dear mother, for a whole year, while 
poor father was away in the United States on business. 
You shall be the new mistress of the Casa Gould.” 

And later, in the inhabited corner of the Palazzo 
above the vineyards, the marble hills, the pines and 
olives of Lucca, he also said — 

“The name of Gould has been always highly re- 
spected in Sulaco. My uncle Harry was chief of the 
State for some time, and has left a great name amongst 
the first families. By this I mean the pure Creole 
families, who take no part in the miserable farce of 
governments. Uncle Harry was no adventurer. In 
Costaguana we Goulds are no adventurers. He was of 
the country, and he loved it, but he remained essentially 
an Englishman in his ideas. He made use of the 
political cry of his time. It was Federation. But he 
was no politician. He simply stood up for social order 
out of pure love for rational liberty and from his hate of 
oppression. There was no nonsense about him. He 
went to work in his own way because it seemed right, 
just as I feel I must lay hold of that mine.” 

In such words he talked to her because his memory 
was very full of the country of his childhood, his heart 
of his life with that girl, and his mind of the San Tome 
Concession. He added that he would have to leave her 
for a few days to find an American, a man from San 
Francisco, who was still somewhere in Europe. A few 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


65 


months before he had made his acquaintance in an old 
historic German town, situated in a mining district. 
The American had his womankind with him, but seemed 
lonely while they were sketching all day long the old 
doorways and the turreted corners of the mediaeval 
houses. Charles Gould had with him the inseparable 
companionship of the mine. The other man was 
interested in mining enterprises, knew something of 
Costaguana, and was no stranger to the name of Gould. 
They had talked together with some intimacy which was 
made possible by the difference of their ages. Charles 
wanted now to find that capitalist of shrewd mind and 
accessible character. His father’s fortune in Costa- 
guana, which he had supposed to be still considerable, 
seemed to have melted in the rascally crucible of 
revolutions. Apart from some ten thousand pounds 
deposited in England, there appeared to be nothing 
left except the house in Sulaco, a vague right of forest 
exploitation in a remote and savage district, and the 
San Tome Concession, which had attended his poor 
father to the very brink of the grave. 

He explained those things. It was late when they 
parted. She had never before given him such a 
fascinating vision of herself. All the eagerness of youth 
for a strange life, for great distances, for a future in 
which there was an air of adventure, of combat — a 
subtle thought of redress and conquest, had filled her 
with an intense excitement, which she returned to the 
giver with a more open and exquisite display of tender- 
ness. 

He left her to walk down the hill, and directly he 
found himself alone he became sober. That irreparable 
change a death makes in the course of our daily thoughts 
can be felt in a vague and poignant discomfort of mind. 
It hurt Charles Gould to feel that never more, by no 


66 


NOSTROMO 


effort of will, would he be able to think of his father in 
the same way he used to think of him when the poor 
man was alive. His breathing image was no longer 
in his power. This consideration, closely affecting his 
own identity, filled his breast with a mournful and angry 
desire for action. In this his instinct was unerring. 
Action is consolatory. It is the epemy of thought and 
the friend of flattering illusions. ( Only in the conduct 
of our action can we find the sense of mastery over the 
Fates.) For his action, the mine was obviously the only 
field. It was imperative sometimes to know how to 
disobey the solemn wishes of the dead. He resolved 
firmly to make his disobedience as thorough (by way 
of atonement) as it well could be. The mine had been 
the cause of an absurd moral disaster; its working must 
be made a serious and moral success. He owed it to 
the dead man’s memory. Such were the — properly 
speaking — emotions of Charles Gould. His thoughts 
ran upon the means of raising a large amount of capital 
in San Francisco or elsewhere; and incidentally there 
occurred to him also the general reflection that the 
counsel of the departed must be an unsound guide. 
Not one of them could be aware beforehand what 
enormous changes the death of any given individual 
may produce in the very aspect of the world. 

The latest phase in the history of the mine Mrs. 
Gould knew from personal experience. It was in 
essence the history of her married life. The mantle of 
the Goulds’ hereditary position in Sulaco had descended 
amply upon her little person; but she would not allow 
the peculiarities of the strange garment to weigh down 
the vivacity of her character, which was the sign of no 
mere mechanical sprightliness, but of an eager intelli- 
gence. It must not be supposed that Mrs. Gould’s 
mind was masculine. A woman with a masculine mind 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


67 


is not a being of superior eflSciency; she is simply a 
phenomenon of imperfect differentiation — interestingly 
barren and without importance. Dona Emilia’s in- 
telligence being feminine led her to achieve the conquest 
of Sulaco, simply by lighting the way for her un- 
selfishness and sympathy. She could converse charm- 
ingly, but she was not talkative. The wisdom of the 
heart having no concern with the erection or demolition 
of theories any more than with the defence of preju- 
dices, has no random words at its command. The 
words it pronounces have the value of acts of integrity, 
tolerance, and compassion. A woman’s true tender- 
ness, like the true virility of man, is expressed in action 
of a conquering kind. The ladies of Sulaco adored 
Mrs. Gould. “They still look upon me as something of 
a monster,” Mrs. Gould had said pleasantly to one of 
the three gentlemen from San Francisco she had to 
entertain in her new Sulaco house just about a year 
after her marriage. 

They were her first visitors from abroad, and they 
had come to look at the San Tome mine. She jested 
most agreeably, they thought; and Charles Gould, be- 
sides knowing thoroughly what he was about, had 
shown himself a real hustler. These facts caused them 
to be well disposed towards his wife. An unmistakable 
enthusiasm, pointed by a slight flavour of irony, made 
her talk of the mine absolutely fascinating to her 
visitors, and provoked them to grave and indulgent 
smiles in which there was a good deal of deference. 
Perhaps had they known how much she was inspired 
by an idealistic view of success they would have been 
amazed at the state of her mind as the Spanish-Ameri- 
can ladies had been amazed at the tireless activity of 
her body. She would — in her own words — have been 
for them “something of a monster.” However, the 


68 


NOSTROMO 


Goulds were in essentials a reticent couple, and their 
guests departed without the suspicion of any other pur- 
pose but simple profit in the working of a silver mine. 
Mrs. Gould had out her own carriage, with two white 
mules, to drive them down to the harbour, whence the 
Ceres was to carry them off into the Olympus of pluto- 
crats. Captain Mitchell had snatched at the occasion 
of leave-taking to remark to Mrs. Gould, in a low, con- 
fidential mutter, “This marks an epoch.’’ 

Mrs. Gould loved the patio of her Spanish house. A 
broad flight of stone steps was overlooked .silently froru 
a niche in the wall by a Madonna in blue robes with the 
crowned child sitting on her arm. Subdued voices 
ascended in the early mornings from the paved well 
of the quadrangle, with the stamping of horses and 
mules led out in pairs to drink at the cistern. A tangle 
of slender bamboo stems drooped its narrow, blade-like 
leaves over the square pool of water, and the fat coach- 
man sat muffled up on the edge, holding lazily the ends 
of halters in his hand. Barefooted servants passed to 
and fro, issuing from dark, low doorways below; two 
laundry girls with baskets of washed linen; the baker 
with the tray of bread made for the day; Leonarda — 
her own camerista — bearing high up, swung from her 
hand raised above her raven black head, a bunch of 
starched under-skirts dazzlingly white in the slant of 
sunshine. Then the old porter would hobble in, sweep- 
ing the flagstones, and the house was ready for the day. 
All the lofty rooms on three sides of the quadrangle 
opened into each other and into the corredor, with its 
wrought-iron railings and a border of flowers, whence, 
like the lady of the mediaeval castle, she could witness 
from above all the departures and arrivals of the Casa, 
to which the sonorous arched gateway lent an air of 
stately importance. 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


69 


She had watched her carriage roll away with the 
three guests from the north. She smiled. Their three 
arms went up simultaneously to their three hats. Cap- 
tain Mitchell, the fourth, in attendance, had already 
begun a pompous discourse. Then she lingered. She 
lingered, approaching her face to the clusters of flowers 
here and there as if to give time to her thoughts to 
catch up with her slow footsteps along the straight 
vista of the corridor. 

A fringed Indian hammock from Aroa, gay with 
coloured feather work, had been swung judiciously in a 
corner that caught the early sun; for the mornings are 
cool in Sulaco. The cluster of flor de noche buena 
blazed in great masses before the open glass doors of the 
reception rooms. A big green parrot, brilliant like an 
emerald in a cage that flashed like gold, screamed out 
ferociously, ‘‘Vive Costaguana!” then called twice 
mellifluously, “Leonarda! Leonarda!” in imitation of 
Mrs. Gould’s voice, and suddenly took refuge in im- 
mobility and silence. Mrs. Gould reached the end of 
the gallery and put her head through the door of her 
husband’s room. 

Charles Gould, with one foot on a low wooden stool, 
was already strapping his spurs. He wanted to hurry 
back to the mine. Mrs. Gould, without coming in, 
glanced about the room. One tall, broad bookcase, 
with glass doors, was full of books; but in the other, 
without shelves, and lined with red baize, were arranged 
firearms: Winchester carbines, revolvers, a couple of 
shot-guns, and even two pairs of double-barrelled holster 
pistols. Between them, by itself, upon a strip of 
scarlet velvet, hung an old cavalry sabre, once the 
property of Don Enrique Gould, the hero of the Occi- 
dental Province, presented by Don Jose Avellanos, the 
hereditary friend of the family. 


70 


NOSTROMO 


Otherwise, the plastered white walls were completely 
bare, except for a water-colour sketch of the San Tome 
mountain — the work of Dona Emilia herself. In the 
middle of the red-tiled floor stood two long tables 
littered with plans and papers, a few chairs, and a glass 
show-case containing specimens of ore from the mine. 
Mrs. Gould, looking at all these things in turn, won- 
dered aloud why the talk of these wealthy and enter- 
prising men discussing the prospects, the working, and 
the safety of the mine rendered her so impatient and un- 
easy,whereas she could talk of the mine by the hour with 
her husband with unwearied interest and satisfaction. 

And dropping her eyelids expressively, she added — 

“What do you feel about it, Charley.? ” 

Then, surprised at her husband’s silence, she raised 
her eyes, opened wide, as pretty as pale flowers. He 
had done with the spurs, and, twisting his moustache 
with both hands, horizontally, he contemplated her 
from the height of his long legs with a visible apprecia- 
tion of her appearance. The consciousness of being 
thus contemplated pleased Mrs. Gould. 

“They are considerable men,” he said. 

“I know. But have you listened to their con- 
versation.? They don’t seem to have understood any- 
thing they have seen here.” 

“They have seen the mine. They have understood 
that to some purpose,” Charles Gould interjected, in 
defence of the visitors; and then his wife mentioned the 
name of the most considerable of the three. He was 
considerable in finance and in industry. His name was 
familiar to many millions of people. He was so con- 
siderable that he would never have travelled so far 
away from the centre of his activity if the doctors had 
not insisted, with veiled menaces, on his taking a long 
holiday. 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


71 


“Mr. Holroyd’s sense of religion,” Mrs. Gould pur- 
sued, “was shocked and disgusted at the tawdriness of 
the dressed-up saints in the cathedral — the worship, he 
called it, of wood and tinsel. But it seemed to me that 
he looked upon his own God as a sort of influential 
partner, who gets his share of profits in the endowment 
of churches. That’s a sort of idolatry. He told me he 
endowed churches every year, Charley.” 

“No end of them,” said Mr. Gould, marvelling in- 
wardly at the mobility of her physiognomy. “All over 
the country. He’s famous for that sort of munificence.” 

“Oh, he didn’t boast,” Mrs. Gould declared, scrupu- 
lously. “ I believe he’s really a good man, but so stupid ! 
A poor Chulo who offers a little silver arm or leg to 
thank his god for a cure is as rational and more touch- 
ing.” 

“He’s at the head of immense silver and iron inter- 
ests,” Charles Gould observed. 

“Ah, yes! The religion of silver and iron. He’s a 
very civil man, though he looked awfully solemn when 
he first saw the Madonna on the staircase, who’s only 
wood and paint; but he said nothing to me. My dear 
Charley, I heard those men talk among themselves. 
Can it be that they really wish to become, for an im- 
mense consideration, drawers of water and hewers of 
wood to all the countries and nations of the earth 

“A man must work to some end,’^Charles Gould said, 
vaguely. 

Mrs. Gould, frowning, surveyed him from head to 
foot. With his riding breeches, leather leggings (an 
article of apparel never before seen in Costaguana), a 
Norfolk coat of grey flannel, and those great flaming 
moustaches, he suggested an officer of cavalry turned 
gentleman farmer. This combination was gratifying to 
Mrs. Gould’s tastes. “How thin the poor boy is!” she 


7,2 


NOSTROMO 


thought. “He overworks himself.” But there was no 
denying that his fine-drawn, keen red faee, and his 
whole, long-limbed, lank person had an air of breeding 
and distinction. And Mrs. Gould relented. 

“I only wondered what you felt,” she murmured, 
gently. 

During the last few days, as it happened, Charles 
Gould had been kept too busy thinking twice before he 
spoke to have paid much attention to the state of his 
feelings. But theirs was a successful match, and he 
had no difficulty in finding his answer. 

“The best of my feelings are in your keeping, my 
dear,” he said, lightly; and there was so much truth in 
that obscure phrase that he experienced towards her 
at the moment a great increase of gratitude and tender- 
ness. 

Mrs. Gould, however, did not seem to find this answer 
in the least obscure. She brightened up delicately; 
already he had changed his tone. 

“But there are facts. The worth of the mine — as a 
mine — is beyond doubt. It shall make us very wealthy. 
The mere working of it is a matter of technical knowl- 
edge, which I have — which ten thousand other men in 
the world have. But its safety, its continued existence 
as an enterprise, giving a return to men — to strangers, 
comparative strangers — who invest money in it, is left 
altogether in my hands. I have inspired confidence in 
a man of wealth and position. You seem to think this 
perfectly natural — do you.^^ Well, I don’t know. I 
don’t know why I have; but it is a fact. This fact 
makes everything possible, because without it I would 
never have thought of disregarding my father’s wishes. 
I would never have disposed of the Concession as a 
speculator disposes of a valuable right to si company — 
for cash and shares, to grow rich eventually if possible. 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


73 


but at any rate to put some money at once in his pocket. 
No. Even if it had been feasible — which I doubt — I 
would not have done so. Poor father did not under- 
stand. He was afraid I would hang on to the ruinous 
thing, waiting for just some such chance, and waste my 
life miserably. That was the true sense of his pro- 
hibition, which we have deliberately set aside.” 

They were walking up and down the corridor. Her 
head just reached to his shoulder. His arm, extended 
downwards, was about her waist. His spurs jingled 
slightly. 

“ He had not seen me for ten years. He did not know 
me. He parted from me for my sake, and he would 
never let me come back. He was always talking in his 
letters of leaving Costaguana, of abandoning everything 
and making his escape. But he was too valuable a 
prey. They would have thrown him into one of their 
prisons at the first suspicion.” 

His spurred feet clinked slowly. He was bending 
over his wife as they walked. The big parrot, turning 
its head askew, followed their pacing figures with a 
round, unblinking eye. 

“He was a lonely man. Ever since I was ten years 
old he used to talk to me as if I had been grown up. 
When I was in Europe he wrote to me every month. 
Ten, twelve pages every month of my life for ten years. 
And, after all, he did not know me! Just think of it — 
ten whole years away; the years I was growing up into a 
man. He could not know me. Do you think he 
could. 

Mrs. Gould shook her head negatively; which was just 
what her husband had expected from the strength of the 
argument. But she shook her head negatively only 
because she thought that no one could know her Charles 
— really know him for what he was but herself. The 


74 


NOSTROMO 


thing was obvious. It could be felt. It required no 
argument. And poor Mr. Gould, senior, who had died 
too soon to ever hear of their engagement, remained too 
shadowy a figure for her to be credited with knowledge 
of any sort whatever. 

“No, he did not understand. In my view this mine 
could never have been a thing to sell. Never! After 
all his misery I simply could not have touched it for 
money alone,” Charles Gould pursued: and she pressed 
her head to his shoulder approvingly. 

These two young people remembered the life which 
had ended wretchedly just when their own lives had 
come together in that splendour of hopeful love, which 
to the most sensible minds appears like a triumph of 
good over all the evils of the earth. A vague idea of 
rehabilitation had entered the plan of their life. That 
it was so vague as to elude the support of argument 
made it only the stronger. It had presented itself to 
them at the instant when the woman’s instinct of de- 
votion and the man’s instinct of activity receive from 
the strongest of illusions their most powerful impulse. 
The very prohibition imposed the necessity of success. 
It was as if they had been morally bound to make good 
their vigorous view of life against the unnatural error of 
weariness and despair. If the idea of wealth was 
present to them it was only so far as it was bound with 
that other success. Mrs. Gould, an orphan from early 
childhood and without fortune, brought up in an 
atmosphere of intellectual interests, had never con- 
sidered the aspects of great wealth. They were too 
remote, and she had not learned that they were de- 
sirable. On the other hand, she had not known any- 
thing of absolute want. Even the very poverty of her 
aunt, the Marchesa, had nothing intolerable to a re- 
fined mind; it seemed in accord with a great grief: it had 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


75 


the austerity of a sacrifice offered to a noble ideal. 
Thus even the most legitimate touch of materialism 
was wanting in Mrs. Gould’s character. The dead man 
of whom she thought with tenderness (because he was 
Charley’s father) and with some impatience (because he 
had been weak), must be put completely in the wrong. 
Nothing else would do to keep their prosperity without a 
stain on its only real, on its immaterial side! 

Charles Gould, on his part, had been obliged to keep 
the idea of wealth well to the fore; but he brought it 
forward as a means, not as an end. Unless the mine 
was good business it could not be touched. He had to 
insist on that aspect of the enterprise. It was his lever 
to move men who had capital. And Charles Gould be- 
lieved in the mine. He knew everything that could be 
known of it. His faith in the mine was contagious, 
though it was not served by a great eloquence; but busi- 
ness men are frequently as sanguine and imaginative 
as lovers. They are affected by a personality much 
oftener than people would suppose; and Charles Gould, 
in his unshaken assurance, was absolutely convincing. 
Besides, it was a matter of common knowledge to the 
men to whom he addressed himself that mining in 
Costaguana was a game that could be made consid- 
ably more than worth the candle. The men of affairs 
knew that very well. The real difficulty in touching it 
was elsewhere. Against that there was an implication 
of calm and implacable resolution in Charles Gould’s 
very voice. Men of affairs venture sometimes on acts 
that the common judgment of the world would pro- 
nounce absurd; they make their decisions on apparently 
impulsive and human grounds. “Very well,” had said 
the considerable personage to whom Charles Gould on 
his way out through San Francisco had lucidly exposed 
his point of view. “Let us suppose that the mining 


76 


NOSTROMO 


affairs of Sulaco are taken in hand. There would 
then be in it: first, the house of Holroyd, which is all 
right; then, Mr. Charles Gould, a citizen of Costaguana, 
who is also all right; and, lastly, the Government of the 
Republic. So far this resembles the first start of the 
Atacama nitrate fields, where there was a financing 
house, a gentleman of the name of Edwards, and — a 
Government; or, rather, two Governments — two South 
American Governments. And you know what came of 
it. War came of it; devastating and prolonged war 
came of it, Mr. Gould. However, here we possess the 
advantage of having only one South American Govern- 
ment hanging around for plunder out of the deal. It is 
an advantage; but then there are degrees of badness, 
and that Government is the Costaguana Government.” 

Thus spoke the considerable personage, the million- 
aire endower of churches on a scale befitting the great- 
ness of his native land — the same to whom the doctors 
used the language of horrid and veiled menaces. He 
was a big-limbed, deliberate man, whose quiet burliness 
lent to an ample silk-faced frock-coat a superfine 
dignity. His hair was iron grey, his eyebrows were 
still black, and his massive profile was the profile of a 
Caesar’s head on an old Roman coin. But his parentage 
was German and Scotch and English, with remote 
strains of Danish and French blood, giving him the 
temperament of a Puritan and an insatiable imagination 
of conquest. He was completely unbending to his 
visitor, because of the warm introduction the visitor had 
brought from Europe, and because of an irrational 
liking for earnestness and determination wherever met, 
to whatever end directed. 

“The Costaguana Government shall play its hand 
forjall it’s worth — and don’t you forget it, Mr. Gould. 
Now, what is Costaguana? It is the bottomless pit of 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


77 


10 per cent, loans and other fool investments. Euro- 
pean capital had been flung into it with both hands for 
years. Not ours, though. We in this country know 
just about enough to keep indoors when it rains. We 
can sit and watch. Of course, some day we shall step 
in. We are bound to. But there’s no hurry. Time 
itself has got to wait on the greatest country in the 
whole of God’s Universe. We shall be giving the word 
for everything: industry, trade, law, journalism, art, 
politics, and religion, from Cape Horn clear over to 
Smith’s Sound, and beyond, too, if anything worth 
taking hold of turns up at the North Pole. And then 
we shall have the leisure to take in hand the outlying 
islands and continents of the earth. We shall run the 
world’s business whether the world likes it or not. The 
world can’t help it — and neither can we, I guess.” 

By this he meant to express his faith in destiny in 
words suitable to his intelligence, which was unskilled 
in the presentation of general ideas. His intelligence 
was nourished on facts; and Charles Gould, whose 
imagination had been permanently affected by the one 
great fact of a silver mine, had no objection to this 
theory of the world’s future. If it had seemed dis- 
tasteful for a moment it was because the sudden state- 
ment of such vast eventualities dwarfed almost to 
nothingness the actual matter in hand. He and his 
plans and all the mineral wealth of the Occidental 
Province appeared suddenly robbed of every vestige 
of magnitude. The sensation was disagreeable; but 
Charles Gould was not dull. Already he felt that he 
was producing a favourable impression; the conscious- 
ness of that flattering fact helped him to a vague smile, 
which his big interlocutor took for a smile of discreet 
and admiring assent. He smiled quietly, too; and 
immediately Charles Gould, with that mental agility 


78 


NOSTROMO 


mankind will display in defence of a cherished hope, 
reflected that the very apparent insignificance of his 
aim would help him to success. Ilis personality and his 
mine would be taken up because it was a matter of no 
great consequence, one way or another, to a man who 
referred his action to such a prodigious destiny. And 
Charles Gould was not humiliated by this consideration, 
because the thing remained as big as ever for him. No- 
body else’s vast conceptions of destiny could diminish 
the aspect of his desire. for the redemption of the San 
Tome mine. In comparison to the correctness of 
his aim, definite in space and absolutely attainable 
within a limited time, the other man appeared for an 
instant as a dreamy idealist of no importance. 

The great man, massive and benignant, had been 
looking at him thoughtfully; when he broke the short 
silence it was to remark that concessions flew about 
thick in the air of Costaguana. Any simple soul that 
just yearned to be taken in could bring down a con- 
cession at the first shot. 

“Our consuls get their mouths stopped with them,” he 
continued, with a twinkle of genial scorn in his eyes. 
But in a moment he became grave. “A conscientious, 
upright man, that cares nothing for boodle, and keeps 
clear of their intrigues, conspiracies, and factions, soon 
gets his passports. See that, Mr. Gould Persona non 
grata. That’s the reason our Government is never 
properly informed. On the other hand, Europe must 
be kept out of this continent, and for proper interfer- 
ence on our part the time is not yet ripe, I dare say. 
But we here — we are not this country’s Government, 
neither are we simple souls. Your affair is all right. 
The main question for us is whether the second partner, 
and that’s you, is the right sort to hold his own against 
the third and unwelcome partner, which is one or 


79 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 

another of the high and mighty robber gangs that run 
the Costaguana Government. What do you think, 
Mr. Gould, eh.^^’’ 

He bent forward to look steadily into the unflinching 
eyes of Charles Gould, who, remembering the large box 
full of his father’s letters, put the accumulated scorn 
and bitterness of many years into the tone of his 
answer — 

“As far as the knowledge of these men and their 
methods and their politics is concerned, I can answer 
for myself. I have been fed on that sort of knowledge 
since I was a boy. I am not likely to fall into mistake 
from excess of optimism.” 

“Not likely, eh.^ That’s all right. Tact and a stiff 
upper lip is what you’ll want; and you could bluff a 
little on the strength of your4)acking. Not too much, 
though. We will go with you as long as the thing runs 
straight. But we won’t be drawn into any large 
trouble. This is the experiment which I am willing to 
make. There is some risk, and we will take it; but if 
you can’t keep up your end, we will stand our loss, of 
course, and then — we’ll let the thing go. This mine 
can wait; it has been shut up before, as you know. You 
must understand that under no circumstances will we 
consent to throw good money after bad.” 

Thus the great personage had spoken then, in his 
own private office, in a great city where other men 
(very considerable in the eyes of a vain populace) 
waited with alacrity upon a wave of his hand. And 
rather more than a year later, during his unexpected 
appearance in Sulaco, he had emphasized his uncom- 
promising attitude with a freedom of sincerity per- 
mitted to his wealth and influence. He did this with 
the less reserve, perhaps, because the inspection of 
what had been done, and more still the way in which 


80 


NOSTROMO 


successive steps had been taken, had impressed him 
with the conviction that Charles Gould was perfectly 
capable of keeping up his end. 

“This young fellow,” he thought to himself, “may 
yet become a power in the land.” 

This thought flattered him, for hitherto the only 
account of this young man he could give to his intimates 
was — 

“My brother-in-law met him in one of these one- 
horse old German towns, near some mines, and sent 
him on to me with a letter. He’s one of the Costaguana 
Goulds, pure-bred Englishmen, but all born in the 
country. His uncle went into politics, was the last 
Provincial President of Sulaco, and got shot after a 
battle. His father was a prominent business man in 
Sta. Marta, tried to keep Wear of their politics, and died 
ruined after a lot of revolutions. And that’s your 
Costaguana in a nutshell.” 

Of course, he was too great a man to be questioned 
as to his motives, even by his intimates. The outside 
world was at liberty to wonder respectfully at the 
hidden meaning of his actions. He was so great a man 
that his lavish patronage of the “purer forms of Christi- 
anity” (which in its naive form of church -building 
amused Mrs. Gould) was looked upon by his fellow- 
citizens as the manifestation of a pious and humble 
spirit. But in his own circles of the financial world the 
taking up of such a thing as the San Tome mine was 
regarded with respect, indeed, but rather as a subject 
for discreet jocularity. It was a great man’s caprice. 
In the great Holroyd building (an enormous pile of 
iron, glass, and blocks of stone at the corner of two 
streets, cobwebbed aloft by the radiation of telegraph 
wires) the heads of principal departments exchanged 
humorous glances, which meant that they were not let 


81 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 

into the secrets of the San Tome business. The 
Costaguana mail (it was never large — one fairly heavy 
envelope) was taken unopened straight into the great 
man’s room, and no instructions dealing with it had 
ever been issued thence. The office whispered that he 
answered personally — and not by dictation either, but 
actually writing in his own hand, with pen and ink, 
and, it was to be supposed, taking a copy in his own 
private press copy-book, inaccessible to profane eyes. 
Some scornful young men, insignificant pieces of minor 
machinery in that eleven-storey -high workshop of great 
affairs, expressed frankly their private opinion that the 
great chief had done at last something silly, and was 
ashamed of his folly; others, elderly and insignificant, 
but full of romantic reverence for the business that had 
devoured their best years, used to mutter darkly and 
knowingly that this was a portentous sign; that the 
Holroyd connection meant by-and-by to get hold of the 
whole Republic of Costaguana, lock, stock, and barrel. 
But, in fact, the hobby theory was the right one. It 
interested the great man to attend personally to the 
San Tome mine; it interested him so much that he 
allowed this hobby to give a direction to the first com- 
plete holiday he had taken for quite a startling number 
of years. He was not running a great enterprise there; 
no mere railway board or industrial corporation. He 
was running a man ! A success would have pleased him 
very much on refreshingly novel grounds; but, on the 
other side of the same feeling, it was incumbent upon 
him to cast it off utterly at the first sign of failure. A 
man may be thrown off. The papers had unfortunately 
trumpeted all over the land his journey to Costaguana. 
If he was pleased at the way Charles Gould was going 
on, he infused an added grimness into his assurances of 
support. Even at the very last interview, half an hour 


m 


NOSTROMO 


or so before he rolled out of the patio, hat in hand, be- 
hind Mrs. Gould’s white mules, he had said in Charles’s 
room — 

“You go ahead in your own way, and I shall know 
how to help you as long as you hold your own. But you 
may rest assured that in a given case we shall know how 
to drop you in time.” 

To this Charles Gohld’s only answer had been: “You 
may begin sending out the machinery as soon as you 
like.” 

And the great man had liked this imperturbable 
assurance. The secret of it was that to Charles 
Gould’s mind these uncompromising terms were agree- 
able. Like this the mine preserved its identity, with 
which he had endowed it as a boy; and it remained 
dependent on himself alone. It was a serious affair, 
and he, too, took it grimly. 

“Of course,” he said to his wife, alluding to this last 
conversation with the departed guest, while they 
walked slowly up and down the corridor, followed by 
the irritated eye of the parrot — “of course, a man of 
that sort can take up a thing or drop it when he likes. 
He will suffer from no sense of defeat. He may have 
to give in, or he may have to die to-morrow, but the 
great silver and iron interests shall survive, and some 
day shall get hold of Costaguana along with the rest of 
the world.” 

They had stopped near the cage. The parrot, 
catching the sound of a word belonging to his vocabu- 
lary, was moved to interfere. Parrots are very human. 

“Viva Costaguana!” he shrieked, with intense self- 
assertion, and, instantly ruffling up his feathers, as- 
sumed an air of puffed-up somnolence behind the 
glittering wires. 

“And do you believe that, Charley?” Mrs. Gould 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 83 

asked. “This seems to me most awful materialism, 
and ” 

“My dear, it’s nothing to me,” interrupted her hus- 
band, in a reasonable tone. “I make use of what I see. 
What’s it to me whether his talk is the voice of destiny 
or simply a bit of clap-trap eloquence.^ There’s a good 
deal of eloquence of one sort or another produced in 
both Americas. The air of the New World seems 
favourable to the art of declamation. Have you for- 
gotten how dear Avellanos can hold forth for hours 
here ?” 

“Oh, but that’s different,” protested Mrs. Gould, 
almost shocked. The allusion was not to the point. 
Don Jose was a dear good man, who talked very well, 
and was enthusiastic about the greatness of the San 
Tome mine. “How can you compare them, Charles.^^” 
she exclaimed, reproachfully “He has suffered — and yet 
he hopes.” 

The working competence of men — which she never 
questioned — was very surprising to Mrs. Gould, be- 
cause upon so many obvious issues they showed them- 
selves strangely muddle-headed. 

Charles Gould, with a careworn calmness which 
secured for him at once his wife’s anxious sympathy, 
assured her that he was not comparing. He was an 
American himself, after all, and perhaps he could under- 
stand both kinds of eloquence — “if it were worth while 
to try,” he added, grimly. But he had breathed the air 
of England longer than any of his people had done for 
three generations, and really he begged to be excused. 
His poor father could be eloquent, too. And he asked 
his wife whether she remembered a passage in one of 
his father’s last letters where Mr. Gould had ex- 
pressed the conviction that “God looked wrathfully 
at these countries, or else He would let some ray of hope 


NOSTROMO 


fall through a rift in the appalling darkness of intrigue, 
bloodshed, and crime that hung over the Queen of 
Continents.” 

Mrs, Gould had not forgotten. ‘‘You read it to me, 
Charley,” she murmured. “It was a striking pro- 
nouncement. How deeply your father must have felt 
its terrible sadness!” 

“He did not like to be robbed. It exasperated him,” 
said Charles Gould. “But the image will serve well 
enough. What is wanted here is law, good faith, order, 
security. Any one can declaim about these things, but 
I pin my faith to material interests. Only let the 
material interests once get a firm footing, and they are 
bound to impose the conditions on which alone they 
can continue to exist. That’s how your money-mak- 
ing is justified here in the face of lawlessness and dis- 
order. It is justified because the security which it 
demands must be shared with an oppressed people. A 
better justice will come afterwards. That’s your ray of 
hope.” His arm pressed her slight form closer to his 
side for a moment. “And who knows whether in that 
sense even the San Tome mine may not become that 
little rift in the darkness which poor father despaired of 
ever seeing.^” 

She glanced up at him with admiration. He was 
competent; he had given a vast shape to the vagueness 
of her unselfish ambitions. 

“Charley,” she said, “you are splendidly diso- 
bedient.” 

He left her suddenly in the corrector to go and get his 
hat, a soft, grey sombrero, an article of national cos- 
tume which combined unexpectedly well with his 
English get-up. He came back, a riding-whip under 
his arm, buttoning up a dogskin glove; his face re- 
flected the resolute nature of his thoughts. His wife 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


85 


had waited for him at the head of the stairs, and before 
he gave her the parting kiss he finished the conversa- 
tion — 

“What should be perfectly clear to us,’’ he said, “is 
the fact that there is no going back. Where could we 
begin life afresh.? We are in now for all that there is 
in us.” 

He bent over her upturned face very tenderly and a 
little remorsefully. Charles Gould was competent 
because he had ho illusions. The Gould Concession 
had to fight for life with such weapons as could be found 
at once in the mire of corruption that was so universal 
as to almost lose its significance. He was prepared to 
stoop for his weapons. For a moment he felt as if the 
silver mine, which had killed his father, had decoyed 
him further than he meant to go; and with the round- 
about logic of emotions, he felt that the worthiness of 
his life was bound up with success. There was no 
going back. 


CHAPTER SEVEN 


Mrs. Gould was too intelligently sympathetic not 
to share that feeling. It made life exciting, and she 
was too much of a woman not to like excitement. But 
it frightened her, too, a little; and when Don Jose 
Avellanos, rocking in the American chair, would go so 
far as to say, “Even, my dear Carlos, if you had failed; 
even if some untoward event were yet to destroy your 
work — which God forbid! — ^you would have deserved 
well of your country,” Mrs. Gould would look up from 
the tea-table profoundly at her unmoved husband 
stirring the spoon in the cup as though he had not heard 
a word. 

Not that Don Jose anticipated anything of the sort. 
He could not praise enough dear Carlos’s tact and 
courage. His English, rock-like quality of character 
was his best safeguard, Don Jose affirmed; and, turning 
to Mrs. Gould, “As to you, Emilia, my soul” — ^he would 
address her with the familiarity of his age and old 
friendship — “you are as true a patriot as though you 
had been born in our midst.” 

This might have been less or more than the truth. 
Mrs. Gould, accompanying her husband all over the 
province in the search for labour, had seen the land 
with a deeper glance than a trueborn Costaguanera 
could have done. In her travel-worn riding habit, her 
face powdered white like a plaster cast, with a further 
protection of a small silk mask during the heat of the 
day, she rode on a well-shaped, light-footed pony in the 
centre of a little cavalcade. Two mozos de campo, 
86 


87 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 

picturesque in great hats, with spurred bare heels, 
in white embroidered calzoneras, leather jackets and 
striped ponchos, rode ahead with carbines across their 
shoulders, swaying in unison to the pace of the horses. 
A tropilla of pack mules brought up the rear in charge of 
a thin brown muleteer, sitting his long-eared beast very 
near the tail, legs thrust far forward, the wide brim of 
his hat set far back, making a sort of halo for his head. 
An old Costaguana officer, a retired senior major of 
humble origin, but patronized by the first families on 
account of his Blanco opinions, had been recommended 
by Don Jose for commissary and organizer of that 
expedition. The points of his grey moustache hung far 
below his chin, and, riding on Mrs. Gould’s left hand, 
he looked about with kindly eyes, pointing out the 
features of the country, telling the names of the little 
pueblos and of the estates, of the smooth-walled 
haciendas like long fortresses crowning the knolls above 
the level of the Sulaco Valley. It unrolled itself, with 
green young crops, plains, woodland, and gleams of 
water, park-like, from the blue vapour of the distant 
sierra to an immense quivering horizon of grass and sky, 
where big white clouds seemed to fall slowly into the 
darkness of their own shadows. 

Men ploughed with wooden ploughs and yoked oxen, 
small on a boundless expanse, as if attacking immensity 
itself. The mounted figures of vaqueros galloped in 
the distance, and the great herds fed with all their 
horned heads one way, in one single wavering line as far 
as eye could reach across the broad potreros. A spread- 
ing cotton-wool tree shaded a thatched ranche by the 
road; the trudging files of burdened Indians taking off 
their hats, would lift sad, mute eyes to the cavalcade 
raising the dust of the crumbling camino real made by 
the hands of their enslaved forefathers. And Mrs. 


88 


NbSTROMO 


Gould, with each day’s journey, seemed to come nearer 
to the soul of the land in the tremendous disclosure 
of this interior unaffected by the slight European veneer 
of the coast towns, a great land of plain and mountain 
and people, suffering and mute, waiting for the future 
in a pathetic immobility of patience. 

She knew its sights and its hospitality, dispensed with 
a sort of slumbrous dignity in those g^eat houses pre- 
senting long, blind walls and heavy portals to the wind- 
swept pastures. She was given the head of the tables, 
where masters and dependants sat in a simple and 
patriarchal state. The ladies of the house would talk 
softly in the moonlight under the orange trees of the 
courtyards, impressing upon her the sweetness of their 
voices and the something mysterious in the quietude 
of their lives. In the morning the gentlemen, well 
mounted in braided sombreros and embroidered riding 
suits, with much silver on the trappings of their horses, 
would ride forth to escort the departing, guests before 
committing them, with grave good-byes, to the care of 
God at the boundary pillars of their estates. In all 
these households she could hear stories of political 
outrage; friends, relatives, ruined, imprisoned, killed in 
the battles of senseless civil wars, barbarously executed 
in ferocious proscriptions, as though the government of 
the country had been a struggle of lust between bands 
of absurd devils let loose upon the land with sabres and 
uniforms and grandiloquent phrases. And on all the 
lips she found a weary desire for peace, the dread of 
officialdom with its nightmarish parody of administra- 
tion without law, without security, and without justice. 

She bore a whole two months of wandering very well ; 
she had that power of resistance to fatigue which one 
discovers here and there in some quite frail-looking 
women with surprise — like a state of possession by a 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


89 


remarkably stubborn spirit. Don Pepe — the old Costa- 
guana major — after much display of solicitude for the 
delicate lady, had ended by conferring upon her the 
name of the “Never-tired Senora.” Mrs. Gould was 
indeed becoming a Costaguanera. Having acquired 
in Southern Europe a knowledge of true peasantry, she 
was able to appreciate the great worth of the people. She 
saw the man under the silent, sad-eyed beast of burden. 
She saw them on the road carrying loads, lonely figures 
upon the plain, toiling under great straw hats, with 
their white clothing flapping about their limbs in the 
wind; she remembered the villages by some group of 
Indian women at the fountain impressed upon her 
memory, by the face of some young Indian girl with a 
melancholy and sensual profile, raising an earthenware 
vessel of cool water at the door of a dark hut with a 
wooden porch cumbered with great brown jars. The 
solid wooden wheels of an ox-cart, halted with its shafts 
in the dust, showed the strokes of the axe; and a party 
of charcoal carriers, with each man’s load resting above 
his head on the top of the low mud wall, slept stretched 
in a row within the strip of shade. 

The heavy stonework of bridges and churches left 
by the 'Conquerors proclaimed the disregard of human 
labour, the tribute-labour of vanished nations. The 
power of king and church was gone, but at the sight of 
some heavy ruinous pile overtopping from a knoll -the 
low mud walls of a village, Don Pepe would interrupt 
the tale of his campaigns to exclaim — 

“Poor Costaguana! Before, it was everything for 
the Padres, nothing for the people; and now it is every- 
thing for these great politicos in Sta. Marta, for negroes 
and thieves.” 

Charles talked with the alcaldes, with the fiscales, 
with the principal people in towns, and with the 


90 


NOSTROMO 


Caballeros on the ej?tates. The commandantes of the 
districts offered him escorts — for he could show an 
authorization from the Sulaco political chief of the day. 
How much the document had cost him in gold twenty- 
dollar pieces was a secret between himself, a great man 
in the United States (who condescended to answer the 
Sulaco mail with his own hand), and a great man of 
another sort, with a dark olive complexion and shifty 
eyes, inhabiting then the Palace of the Intendencia in 
Sulaco, and who piqued himself on his culture and 
Europeanism generally in a rather French style be- 
cause he had lived in Europe for some years — in exile, 
he said. However, it was pretty well known that just 
before this exile he had incautiously gambled away all 
the cash in the Custom House of a small port where a 
friend in power had procured for him the post of sub- 
collector. That youthful indiscretion had, amongst 
other inconveniences, obliged him to earn his living 
for a time as a cafe waiter in Madrid; but his talents 
must have been great, after all, since they had enabled 
him to retrieve his political fortunes so splendidly. 
Charles Gould, exposing his business with an imperturb- 
able steadiness, called him Excellency. 

The provincial Excellency assumed a weary su- 
periority, tilting his chair far back near an open window 
in the true Costaguana manner. The military band 
happened to be braying operatic selections on the plaza 
just then, and twice he raised his hand imperatively for 
silence in order to listen to a favourite passage. 

“Exquisite, delicious!” he murmured; while Charles 
Gould waited, standing by with inscrutable patience. 
“Lucia, Lucia di Lammermoor! I am passionate for 
music. It transports me. Ha! the divine — ha! — 
Mozart. Si! divine . . . What is it you were 

saying 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


91 


Of course, rumours had reached him already of the 
newcomer’s intentions. Besides, he had received an 
official warning from Sta. Marta. His manner was 
intended simply to conceal his curiosity and impress 
his visitor. But after he had locked up something 
valuable in the drawer of a large writing-desk in a dis- 
tant part of the room, he became very affable, and 
walked back to his chair smartly. 

“If you intend to build villages and assemble a 
population near the mine, you shall require a decree 
of the Minister of the Interior for that,” he suggested 
in a business-like manner. 

“I have already sent a memorial,” said Charles 
Gould, steadily, “and I reckon now confidently upon 
your Excellency’s favourable conclusions.” 

The Excellency was a man of many moods. With 
the receipt of the money a great mellowness had de- 
scended upon his simple soul. Unexpectedly he fetched 
a deep sigh. 

“Ah, Don Carlos! What we want is advanced men 
like you in the province. The lethargy — the lethargy 
of these aristocrats! The want of public spirit! The 
absence of all enterprise ! I, with my profound studies 
in Europe, you understand ” 

With one hand thrust into his swelling bosom, he 
rose and fell on his toes, and for ten minutes, almost 
without drawing breath, went on hurling himself 
intellectually to the assault of Charles Gould’s .polite 
silence; and when, stopping abruptly, he fell back into 
his chair, it was as though he had been beaten off from 
a fortress. To save his dignity he hastened to dismiss 
this silent man with a solemn inclination of the head 
and the words, pronounced with moody, fatigued con- 
descension — 

“You may depend upon my enlightened goodwill 


92 NOSTROMO 

as long as your conduct as a good citizen deserves 
it.” 

He took up a paper fan and began to cool himself with 
a consequential air, while Charles Gould bowed and 
withdrew. Then he dropped the fan at once, and 
stared with an appearance of wonder and perplexity at 
the closed door for quite a long time. At last he 
shrugged his shoulders as if to assure himself of his dis- 
dain. Cold, dull. No intellectuality. Red hair. A 
true Englishman. He despised him. . 

His face darkened. What meant this unimpressed 
and frigid behaviour.^ He was the first of the suc- 
cessive politicians sent out from the capital to rule the 
Occidental Province whom the manner of Charles 
Gould in oflficial intercourse was to strike as offensively 
independent. 

Charles Gould assumed that if the appearance of 
listening to deplorable balderdash must form part of the 
price he had to pay for being left unmolested, the obliga- 
tion of uttering balderdash personally was by no means 
included in the bargain. He drew the line there. To 
.these provincial autocrats, before whom the peaceable 
population of all classes had been accustomed to 
tremble, the reserve of that English-looking engineer 
caused an uneasiness which swung to and fro between 
cringing and truculence. Gradually all of them dis- 
covered that, no matter what party was in power, that 
man remained in most effective touch with the higher 
authorities in Sta. Marta. 

This was a fact, and it accounted perfectly for the 
Goulds being by no means so wealthy as the engineer-in- 
chief on the new railway could legitimately suppose. 
Following the advice of Don Jose Avellanos, who was a 
man of good counsel (though rendered timid by his 
horrible experiences of Guzman Bento’s time), Charles 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


93 


Gould had kept clear of the capital; but in the current 
gossip of the foreign residents there he was known 
(with a good deal of seriousness underlying the irony) 
by the nickname of “King of Sulaco.” An advocate of 
the Costaguana Bar, a man of reputed ability and good 
character, member of the distinguished Moraga family 
possessing extensive estates in the Sulaco Valley, was 
pointed out to strangers, with a shade of mystery and 
respect, as the agent of the San Tome mine — “political, 
you know.’’ He was tall, black- whiskered, and dis- 
creet. It was known that he had easy access to minis- 
ters, and that the numerous Costaguana generals were 
always anxious to dine at his house. Presidents 
granted him audience with facility. He corresponded 
actively with his maternal uncle, Don Jose Avellanos; 
but his letters — unless those expressing formally his 
dutiful affection — were seldom entrusted to the Costa- 
guana Post Office. There the envelopes are opened, 
indiscriminately, with the frankness of a brazen and 
childish impudence characteristic of some Spanish- 
American Governments. But it must be noted that at 
about the time of the re-opening of the San Tome mine 
the muleteer who had been employed by Charles Gould 
in his preliminary travels on the Campo added his small 
train of animals to the thin stream of traffic carried 
over the mountain passes between the Sta. Marta up- 
land and the Valley of Sulaco. There are no travellers 
by that arduous and unsafe route unless under very 
exceptional circumstances, and the state of inland 
trade did not visibly require additional transport 
facilities; but the man seemed to find his account in it. 
A few packages were always found for him whenever he 
took the road. Very brown and wooden, in goatskin 
breeches with the hair outside, he sat near the tail of 
his own smart mule, his great hat turned against the 


94 


NOSTROMO 


sun, an expression of blissful vacancy on his long face, 
humming day after day a love-song in a plaintive key, 
or, without a change of expression, letting out a yell at 
his small tropilla in front. A round little guitar hung 
high up on his back; and there was a place scooped out 
artistically in the wood of one of his pack-saddles where 
a tightly rolled piece of paper could be slipped in, the 
wooden plug replaced, and the coarse canvas nailed on 
again. When in Sulaco it was his practice to smoke and 
doze all day long (as though he had no care in the world) 
on a stone bench outside the doorway of the Casa 
Gould and facing the windows of the Avellanos house. 
Years and years ago his mother had been chief laundry- 
woman in that family — very accomplished in the mat- 
ter of clear-starching. He himself had been born on 
one of their haciendas. His name was Bonifacio, and 
Don Jose, crossing the street about five o’clock to call on 
Dona Emilia, always acknowledged his humble salute 
by some movement of hand or head. The porters of 
both houses conversed lazily with him in tones of grave 
intimacy. His evenings he devoted to gambling and 
to calls in a spirit of generous festivity upon the peyne 
d'oro girls in the more remote side-streets of the town. 
But he, too, was a discreet man. 


CHAPTER EIGHT 


Those of us whom business or curiosity took to 
Sulaco in these years before the first adveiit of the rail- 
way can remember the steadying effect of the San 
Tome mine upon the life of that remote province. The 
outward appearances had not changed then as they 
have changed since, as I am told, with cable cars 
running along the streets of the Constitution, and 
carriage roads far into the country, to Rincon and other 
villages, where the foreign merchants and the Ricos 
generally have their modern villas, and a vast railway 
goods yard by the harbour, which has a quay-side, a 
long range of warehouses, and quite serious, organized 
labour troubles of its own. 

Nobody had ever heard of labour troubles then. The 
Cargadores of the port formed, indeed, an unruly 
brotherhood of all sorts of scum, with a patron saint 
of their own. They went on strike regularly (every 
bull-fight day), a form of trouble that even Nostromo 
at the height of his prestige could never cope with 
efficiently; but the morning after each fiesta, before the 
Indian market-women had opened their mat parasols 
on the plaza, when the snows of Higuerota gleamed 
pale over the town on a yet black sky, the appearance 
of a phantom-like horseman mounted on a silver-grey 
mare solved the problem, of labour without fail. His 
steed paced the lanes of the slums and the weed-grown 
enclosures within the old ramparts, between the black, 
lightless cluster of huts, like cow-byres, like dog- 
kennels. The horseman hammered with the butt of a 


95 


96 


NOSTROMO 


heavy revolver at the doors of low pulperias, of ob- 
seene lean-to sheds sloping against the tumble-down 
piece of a noble wall, at the wooden sides of dwellings so 
flimsy that the sound of snores and sleepy mutters 
within could be heard in the pauses of the thundering 
clatter of his blows. He called out men’s names 
menacingly from the saddle, once, twice. The drowsy 
answers — grumpy, conciliating, savage, jocular, or 
deprecating — came out into the silent darkness in which 
the horseman sat still, and presently a dark figure would 
flit out coughing in the still air. Sometimes a low- 
toned woman cried through the window-hole softly, 
“He’s coming directly, senor,” and the horseman waited 
silent on a motionless horse. But if perchance he had 
to dismount, then, after a while, from the door of that 
hovel or of that pulperia, with a ferocious scuffle and 
stifled imprecations, a cargador would fly out head 
first and hands abroad, to sprawl under the forelegs of 
the silver-grey mare, who only pricked forward her 
sharp little ears. She was used to that work; and the 
man, picking himself up, would walk away hastily from 
Nostromo’s revolver, reeling a little along the street 
and snarling low curses. At sunrise Captain Mitchell, 
coming out anxiously in his night attire on to the 
wooden balcony running the whole length of the O.S.N. 
Company’s lonely building by the shore, would see 
the lighters already under way, figures moving busily 
about the cargo cranes, perhaps hear the invaluable 
Nostrpmo, now dismounted and in the checked shirt 
and red sash of a Mediterranean sailor, bawling orders 
from the end of the jetty in a stentorian voice. A 
fellow in a thousand! 

The material apparatus of perfected civilization 
which obliterates the individuality of old towns under 
the stereotyped conveniences of modern life had not 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


97 


intruded as yet; but over the worn-out antiquity of 
Sulaco, so characteristic with its stuccoed houses and 
barred windows, with the great yellowy-white walls of 
abandoned convents behind the rows of sombre green 
cypresses, that fact — very modern in its spirit — the 
San Tome mine had already thrown its subtle influence. 
It had altered, too, the outward character of the 
crowds on feast days on the plaza before the open portal 
of the cathedral, by the number of white ponchos with a 
green stripe affected as holiday wear by the San Tome 
miners. They had also adopted white hats with green 
cord and braid — articles of good quality, which could 
be obtained in the storehouse of the administration for 
very little money. A peaceable Cholo wearing these 
colours (unusual in Costaguana) was somehow very 
seldom beaten to within an inch of his life on a charge of 
disrespect to the town police; neither ran he much risk 
of being suddenly lassoed on the road by a recruiting 
party of lanceros — a method of voluntary enlistment 
looked upon as almost legal in the Republic. Whole 
■ villages were known to have volunteered for the army 
in that way; but, as Don Pepe would say with a hope- 
less shrug to Mrs. Gould, “What would you! Poor 
people! Pobrecitos! Pobrecitos! But the State must 
have its soldiers.” 

Thus professionally spoke Don Pepe, the fighter, with 
pendent moustaches, a nut-brown, lean face, and a 
clean run of a cast-iron jaw, suggesting the type of a 
cattle-herd horseman from the great Llanos of the 
South. “If you will listen to an old officer of Paez, 
senores,” was the exordium of all his speeches in the 
Aristocratic Club of Sulaco, where he was admitted on 
account of his past services to the extinct cause of 
Federation. The club, dating from the days of the 
proclamation of Costaguana’s independence, boasted 


98 


NOSTROMO 


many names of liberators amongst its first founders. 
Suppressed arbitrarily innumerable times by various 
Governments, with memories of proscriptions and of at 
least one wholesale massacre of its members, sadly 
assembled for a banquet by the order of a zealous 
military commandante (their bodies were afterwards 
stripped naked and flung into the plaza out of the win- 
dows by the lowest scum of the populace), it was again 
flourishing, at that period, peacefully. It extended to 
strangers the large hospitality of the cool, big rooms of 
its historic quarters in the front part of a house, once the 
residence of a high official of the Holy Office. The two 
wings, shut up, crumbled behind the nailed doors, and 
what may be described as a grove of young orange trees 
grown in the unpaved patio concealed the utter ruin of 
the back part facing the gate. You turned in from the 
street, as if entering a secluded orchard, where you came 
upon the foot of a disjointed staircase, guarded by a 
moss-stained effigy of some saintly bishop, mitred and 
staffed, and bearing the indignity of a broken nose 
meekly, with his fine stone hands crossed on his breast. 
The chocolate-coloured faces of servants with mops of 
black hair peeped at you from above; the click of 
billiard balls came to your ears, and ascending the 
steps, you would perhaps see in the first sala, very stiff 
upon a straight-backed chair, in a good light, Don Pepe 
moving his long moustaches as he spelt his way, at arm’s 
length, through an old Sta. Marta newspaper. His 
horse — a stony-hearted but per'severing black brute 
with a hammer head — you would have seen in the 
street dozing motionless under an immense saddle, with 
its nose almost touching the curbstone of the sidewalk. 

Don Pepe, when “down from the mountain,” as the 
phrase, often heard in Sulaco, went, could also be seen 
in the drawing-room of the Casa Gould. He sat with 


99 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 

modest assurance at some distance from the tea-table. 
With his knees close together, and a kindly twinkle of 
drollery in his deep-set eyes, he would throw his small 
and ironic pleasantries into the current of conversation. 
There was in that man a sort of sane, humorous shrewd- 
ness, and a vein of genuine humanity so often found in 
simple old soldiers of proved courage who have seen 
much desperate service. Of course he knew nothing 
whatever of mining, but his employment was of a special 
kind. He was in charge of the whole population in the 
territory of the mine, which extended from the head of 
the gorge to where the cart track from the foot of the 
mountain enters the plain, crossing a stream over a 
little wooden bridge painted green — green, the colour of 
hope, being also the colour of the mine. 

It was reported in Sulaco that up there “ at the moun- 
tain” Don Pepe walked about precipitous paths, girt 
with a great sword and in a shabby uniform with 
tarnished bullion epaulettes of a senior major. Most 
miners being Indians, with big wild eyes, addressed him 
as Taita (father), as these barefooted people of Costa- 
guana will address anybody who wears shoes; but it was 
Basilio, Mr. Gould’s own mozo and the head servant of 
the Casa, who, in all good faith and from a sense of 
propriety, announced him once in the solemn words, 
“El Senor Gobernador has arrived.” 

Don Jose Avellanos, then in the drawing-room, was 
delighted beyond measure at the aptness of the title, 
with which he greeted the old major banteringly as 
soon as the latter’s soldierly figure appeared in the door- 
way. Don Pepe only smiled in his long moustaches, as 
much as to say, “You might have found a worse name 
for an old soldier.” 

And El Senor Gobernador he had remained, with his 
small jokes upon his function and upon his domain. 


100 NOSTROMO 

where he affirmed with humorous exaggeration to Mrs. 
Gould — . 

“No two stones could come together anywhere with- 
out the Gobernador hearing the click, senora.” 

And he would tap his ear with the tip of his forefinger 
knowingly. Even when the number of the miners alone 
rose to over six hundred he seemed to know each of them 
individually, all the innumerable Joses, Manuels', 
Ignacios, from the villages primero — segundo — or 
tercero (there were three mining villages) under his 
government. He could distinguish them not only by 
their flat, joyless faces, which to Mrs. Gould looked all 
alike, as if run into the same ancestral mould of suffer- 
ing and patience, but apparently also by the infinitely 
graduated shades of reddish-brown, of blackish-brown, 
of coppery-brown backs, as the two shifts, stripped to 
linen drawers and leather skull-caps, mingled together 
with a confusion of naked limbs, of shouldered picks, 
swinging lamps, in a great shuffie of sandalled feet on 
the open plateau before the entrance of the main 
tunnel. It was a time of pause. The Indian boys 
leaned idly against the long line of little cradle wagons 
standing empty; the screeners and ore-breakers squat- 
ted on their heels smoking long cigars; the great wooden 
shoots slanting over the edge of the tunnel plateau were 
silent; and only the ceaseless, violent rush of water in 
the open flumes could be heard, murmuring fiercely, 
with the splash and rumble of revolving turbine- 
wheels, and the thudding march of the stamps pound- 
ing to powder the treasure rock on the plateau below. 
The heads of gangs, distinguished by brass medals 
hanging on their bare breasts, marshalled their squads; 
and at last the mountain would swallow one-half of the 
silent crowd, while the other half would move off in long 
files down the zigzag paths leading to the bottom of the 


THE sil\t:r of the mine 


101 


gorge. It was deep; and, far below, a thread of vegeta- 
tion winding between the blazing rock faces resembled 
a slender green cord, in which three lumpy knots of 
banana patches, palm-leaf roots, and shady trees 
marked the Village One, Village Two, Village Three, 
housing the miners of the Gould Concession. 

Whole families had been moving from the first 
towards the spot in the Higuerota range, whence the 
rumour of work and safety had spread over the pastoral 
Campo, forcing its way also, even as the waters of a high 
flood, into the nooks and crannies of the distant blue 
walls of the Sierras. Father first, in a pointed straw 
hat, then the mother with the bigger children, generally 
also a diminutive donkey, all under burdens, except the 
leader himself, or perhaps some grown girl, the pride of 
the family, stepping barefooted and straight as an 
arrow, with braids of raven hair, a thick, haughty pro- 
file, and no load to carry but the small guitar of the 
country and a pair of soft leather sandals tied together 
on her back. At the sight of such parties strung out on 
the cross trails between the pastures, or camped by the 
side of the royal road, travellers on horseback would 
remark to each other — 

“More people going to the San Tome mine. We 
shall see others to-morrow.” 

And spurring on in the dusk they would discuss the 
great news of the province, the news of the San Tome 
mine. A rich Englishman was going to work it — and 
perhaps not an Englishman, Quien sale ! A foreigner 
with much money. Oh, yes, it had begun. A party of 
men who had been to Sulaco with a herd of black bulls 
for the next corrida had reported that from the porch 
of the posada in Rincon, only a short league from the 
town, the lights on the mountain were visible, twinlding 
above the trees. And there was a woman seen riding 


102 


NOSTROMO 


a horse sideways, not in the chair seat, but upon a sort 
of saddle, and a man’s hat on her head. She walked 
about, too, on foot up the mountain paths. A woman 
engineer, it seemed she was. 

“What an absurdity! Impossible, senor!” 

“ Si! Si! Una Americana del Norte'' 

“Ah, well! if your worship is informed. Una Ameri- 
cana; it need be something of that sort.” 

And they would laugh a little with astonishment and 
scorn, keeping a wary eye on the shadows of the road, 
for one is liable to meet bad men when travelling late on 
the Campo. 

And it was not only the men that Don Pepe knew so 
well, but he seemed able, with one attentive, thoughtful 
glance, to classify each woman, girl, or growing youth 
of his domain. It was only the small fry that puzzled 
him sometimes. He and the padre could be -seen 
frequently side by §ide, meditative and gazing across the 
street of a village at a lot of sedate brown children, try- 
ing to sort them out, as it were, in low, consulting tones, 
or else they would together put searching questions as 
to the parentage of some small, staid urchin met 
wandering, naked and grave, along the road with a 
cigar in his baby mouth, and perhaps his mother’s 
rosary, purloined for purposes of ornamentation, hang- 
ing in a loop of beads low down on his rotund little 
stomach. The spiritual and temporal pastors of the 
mine flock were very good friends. With Dr. Monyg- 
ham, the medical pastor, who had accepted the charge 
from Mrs. Gould, and lived in the hospital building, 
they were on not so intimate terms. But no one could 
be on intimate terms with El Senor Doctor, who, with 
his twisted shoulders, drooping head, sardonic mouth, 
and side-long bitter glance, was mysterious and un- 
canny, The other two authorities worked in har- 


103 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 

mony. Father Roman, dried-up, small, alert, wrinkled, 
with big round eyes, a sharp chin, and a great snuff - 
taker, was an old campaigner, too; he had shriven 
many simple souls on the battlefields of the Republic, 
kneeling by the dying on hillsides, in the long grass, 
in the gloom of the forests, to hear the last confession 
with the smell of gunpowder smoke in his nostrils, the 
rattle of muskets, the hum and spatter of bullets in his 
ears. And where was the harm if, at the presbytery, 
they had a game with a pack of greasy cards in the 
early evening, before Don Pepe went his last rounds to 
see that all the watchmen of the mine — a body or- 
ganized by himself — were at their posts.? For that last 
duty before he slept Don Pepe did actually gird his old 
sword on the verandah of an unmistakable American 
white frame house, which Father Roman called the 
presbytery. Near by, a long, low, dark building, 
steeple-roofed, like a vast barn with a wooden cross 
over the gable, was the miners’ chapel. There Father 
Roman said Mass every day before a sombre altar- 
piece representing the Resurrection, the grey slab of the 
tombstone balanced on one corner, a figure soaring up- 
wards, long-limbed and livid, in an oval of pallid light, 
and a helmeted brown legionary^ smitten down, right 
across the bituminous foreground. “This picture, my 
children, muy linda e maravillosa,'' Father Roman would 
say to some of his flock, “ which you behold here through 
the munificence of the wife of our Senor Administrador, 
has been painted in Europe, a country of saints and 
miracles, and much greater than our Costaguana.” 
And he would take a pinch of snuff with unction. But 
when once an inquisitive spirit desired to know in what 
direction this Europe was situated, whether up or down 
the coast. Father Roman, to conceal his perplexity, be- 
came very reserved and severe. “No doubt it is 


104 


NOSTROMO 


extremely far away. But ignorant sinners like you of 
the San Tome mine should think earnestly of ever- 
lasting punishment instead of inquiring into the 
magnitude of the earth, with its countries and popula- 
tions altogether beyond your understanding.” 

With a “Good-night, Padre;” “Good-night, Don 
Pepe,” the Gobernador would go off, holding up his 
sabre against his side, his body bent forward, with a 
long, plodding stride in the dark. The jocularity 
proper to an innocent card game for a few cigars or a 
bundle of yerba was replaced at once by the stern duty 
mood of an officer setting out to visit the outposts of an 
encamped army. One loud blast of the whistle that 
hung from his neck provoked instantly a great shrilling 
of responding whistles, mingled with the barking of 
dogs, that would calm down slowly at last, away up at 
the head of the gorge; and in the stillness two serenos, 
on guard by the bridge, would appear walking noise- 
lessly towards him. On one side of the road a long 
frame building— the store — would be closed and barri- 
caded from end to end; facing it another white frame 
house, still longer, and with a verandah — the hospital — 
would have lights in the two windows of Dr. Monyg- 
ham’s quarters. Even the delicate foliage of a clump of 
pepper trees did not stir, so breathless would be the 
darkness warmed by the radiation of the over-heated 
rocks. Don Pepe would stand still for a moment with 
the two motionless serenos before him, and, abruptly, 
high up on the sheer face of the mountain, dotted with 
single torches, like drops of fire fallen from the two great 
blazing clusters of lights above, the ore shoots would 
begin to rattle. The great clattering, shuffiing noise, 
gathering speed and weight, would be caught up by the 
walls of the gorge, and sent upon the plain in a growl of 
thunder. The pasadero in Rincon swore that on calm 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 105 

nights, by listening intently, he could catch the sound 
in his doorway as of a storm in the mountains. 

To Charles Gould’s fancy it seemed that the sound 
must reach tlie uttermost limits of the province. Rid- 
ing at night towards the mine, it would meet him at the 
edge of a little wood just beyond Rincon. There was 
no mistaking the growling mutter of the mountain 
pouring its stream of treasure under the stamps; and it 
came to his heart with the peculiar force of a procla- 
mation thundered forth over the land and the marvel- 
lousness of an accomplished fact fulfilling an audacious 
desire. He had heard this desire. He had heard this 
very sound in his imagination on that far-off evening 
when his wife and himself, after a tortuous ride through 
a strip of forest, had reined in their horses near the 
stream, and had gazed for the first time upon the 
jungle-grown solitude of the gorge. The head of a 
palm rose here and there. In a high ravine round the 
corner of the San Tome mountain (which is square like 
a blockhouse) the thread of a slender waterfall flashed 
bright and glassy through the dark green of the heavy 
fronds of tree-ferns. Don Pepe, in attendance, rode 
up, and, stretching his arm up the gorge, had declared 
with mock solemnity, “Behold the very paradise of 
snakes, senora.” 

And then they had wheeled their horses and ridden 
back to sleep that night at Rincon. The alcalde — an 
old, skinny Moreno, a sergeant of Guzman Bento’s 
time — had cleared respectfully out of his house with his 
three pretty daughters, to make room for the foreign 
senora and their worships the Caballeros. All he asked 
Charles Gould (whom he took for a mysterious and 
official person) to do for him was to remind the supreme 
Government — El Gobierno supremo — of a pension 
(amounting to about a dollar a month) to which* he 


106 


NOSTROMO 


believed himself entitled. It had been promised to 
him, he affirmed, straightening his bent back martially, 
“many years ago, for my valour in the wars with the 
wild Indies when a young man, senor.” 

The waterfall existed no longer. The tree-ferns that 
had luxuriated in its spray had dried around the dried- 
up pool, and the high ravine was only a big trench half 
filled up with the refuse of excavations and tailings. 
The torrent, dammed up above, sent its water rushing 
along the open flumes of scooped tree trunks striding on 
trestle-legs to the turbines working the stamps on the 
lower plateau — the mesa grande of the San Tome 
mountain. Only the memory of the waterfall, with its 
amazing fernery, like a hanging garden above the rocks 
of the gorge, was preserved in Mrs. Gould’s water- 
colour sketch; she had made it hastily one day from a 
cleared patch in the bushes, sitting in the shade of a 
roof of straw erected for her on three rough poles under 
Don Pepe’s direction. 

Mrs. Gould had seen it all from the beginning: the 
clearing of the wilderness, the making of the road, the 
cutting of new paths up the cliff face of San Tome. For 
weeks together she had lived on the spot with her hus- 
band; and she was so little in Sulaco during that year 
that the appearance of the Gould carriage on the 
Alameda would cause a social excitement. From the 
heavy family coaches full of stately senoras and black- 
eyed senoritas rolling solemnly in the shaded alley white 
hands were waved towards her with animation in a 
flutter of greetings. Dona Emilia was “down from the 
mountain.” 

But not for long. Dona Emilia would be gone “ up to 
the mountain” in a day or two, and her sleek carriage 
mules would have an easy time of it for another long 
spell. She had watched the erection of the first frame- 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


107 


house put up on the lower mesa for an office and Don 
Pepe’s quarters; she heard with a thrill of thankful 
emotion the first wagon load of ore rattle down the then 
only shoot; she had stood by her husband’s side per- 
fectly silent, and gone cold all over with excitement at 
the instant when the first battery of only fifteen stamps 
was put in motion for the first time. On the occasion 
when the fires under the first set of retorts in their shed 
had glowed far into the night she did not retire to rest 
on the rough cadre set up for her in the as yet bare 
frame-house till she had seen the first spungy lump of 
silver yielded to the hazards of the world by the dark 
depths of the Gould Concession; she had laid her un- 
mercenary hands, with an eagerness that made them 
tremble, upon the first silver ingot turned out still warm 
from the mould; and by her imaginative estimate of its 
power she endowed that lump of metal with a justifi- 
cative conception, as though it were not a mere fact, 
but something far-reaching and impalpable, like the 
true expression of an emotion or the emergence of a 
principle. 

Don Pepe, extremely interested, too, looked over her 
shoulder with a smile that, making longitudinal folds 
on his face, caused it to resemble a leathern mask with a 
benignantly diabolic expression. 

“Would not the muchachos of Hernandez like to get 
hold of this insignificant object, that looks, por Dios, 
very much like a piece of tin.?” he remarked, jocularly. 

Hernandez, the robber, had been an inoffensive, small 
ranchero, kidnapped with circumstances of peculiar 
atrocity from his home during one of the civil wars, and 
forced to serve in the army. There his conduct as 
soldier was exemplary, till, watching his chance, he 
killed his colonel, and managed to get clear away. With 
a band of deserters, who chose him for their chief, he had 


108 


NOSTROMO 


taken refuge beyond the wild and waterless Bolson de 
Tonoro. The haciendas paid him blackmail in cattle 
and horses; extraordinary stories were told of his powers 
and of his wonderful escapes from capture. He used 
to ride, single-handed, into the villages and the little 
towns on the Campo, driving a pack mule before him, 
with two revolvers in his belt, go straight to the shop or 
store, select what he wanted, and ride away unopposed 
because of the terror his exploits and his audacity in- 
spired. Poor country people he usually left alone; the 
upper class were often stopped on the roads and robbed ; 
but any unlucky official that fell into his hands was sure 
to get a severe flogging. The army officers did not like 
his name to be mentioned in their presence. His 
followers, mounted on stolen horses, laughed at the pur- 
suit of the regular cavalry sent to hunt them down, and 
whom they took pleasure to ambush most scientifically 
in the broken ground of their own fastness. Expedi- 
tions had been fitted out; a price had been put upon his 
head; even attempts had been made, treacherously of 
course, to open negotiations with him, without in the 
slightest way affecting the even tenor of his career. At 
last, in true Costaguana fashion, the Fiscal of Tonoro, 
who was ambitious of the glory of having reduced the 
famous Hernandez, offered him a sum of money and a 
safe conduct out of the country for the betrayal of his 
band. But Hernandez evidently was not of the stuff 
of which the distinguished military politicians and 
conspirators of Costaguana are made. This clever but 
common device (which frequently works like a charm 
in putting down revolutions) failed with the chief of 
vulgar Salteadores. It promised well for the Fiscal at 
first, but ended very badly for the squadron of lanceros 
posted (by the Fiscal’s directions) in a fold of the ground 
into which Hernandez had promised to lead, his un- 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 109 

suspecting followers. They came, indeed, at the ap- 
pointed time, but creeping on their hands and knees 
through the bush, and only let their presence be known 
by a general discharge of firearms, which emptied 
many saddles. The troopers who escaped came riding 
very hard into Tonoro. It is said that their commanding 
oflficer (who, being better mounted, rode far ahead of the 
rest) afterwards got into a state of despairing in- 
toxication and beat the ambitious Fiscal severely with 
the flat of his sabre in the presence of his wife and 
daughters, for bringing this disgrace upon the National 
Army. The highest civil official of Tonoro, falling to 
the ground in a swoon, was further kicked all over the 
body and rowelled with sharp spurs about the neck and 
face because of the great sensitiveness of his military 
colleague. This gossip of the inland Campo, so 
characteristic of the rulers of the country with its 
story of oppression, inefficiency, fatuous methods, 
treachery, and savage brutality, was perfectly known 
to Mrs. Gould. That it should be accepted with no 
indignant comment by people of intelligence, refinement, 
and character as something inherent in the nature of 
things was one of the symptoms of degradation that had 
the power to exasperate her almost to the verge of 
despair. Still looking at the ingot of silver, she shook 
her head at Don Pepe’s remark — 

“If it had not been for the lawless tyranny of your 
Government, Don Pepe, many an outlaw now with 
Hernandez would be living peaceably and happy by the 
honest work of his hands.’’ 

“Senora,” cried Don Pepe, with enthusiasm, “it is 
true! It is as if God had given you the power to look 
into the very breasts of people. You have seen them 
working round you. Dona Emilia — meek as lambs, 
patient like their own burros, brave like lions. I have 

M 


110 


NOSTROMO 


led them to the very muzzles of guns — I, who stand 
here before you, senora — ^in the time of Paez, who was 
full of generosity, and in courage only approached by 
the uncle of Don Carlos here, as far as I know. No 
wonder there are bandits in the Campo when there are 
none but thieves, swindlers, and sanguinary macaques 
to rule us in Sta. Marta. However, all the same, a 
bandit is a bandit, and we shall have a dozen good 
straight Winchesters to ride with the silver down to 
Sulaco.’’ 

Mrs. Gould’s ride with the first silver escort to Sulaco 
was the closing episode of what she called “my camp 
life” before she had settled in her town-house per- 
manently, as was proper and even necessary for the wife 
of the administrator of such an important institution as 
the San Tome mine. For the San Tome mine was to 
become an institution, a rallying point for everything 
in the province that needed order and stability to live. 
Security seemed to fiow upon this land from the 
mountain-gorge. The authorities of Sulaco had learned 
that the San Tome mine could make it worth their while 
to leave things and people alone. This was the nearest 
approach to the rule of common-sense and justice 
Charles Gould felt it possible to secure at fir^t. In fact, 
the mine, with its organization, its population growing 
fiercely attached to their position of privileged safety, 
with its armoury, with its Don Pepe, with its armed 
body of serenos (where, it was said, many an outlaw and 
deserter — and even some members of Hernandez’s 
band — had found a place), the mine was a power in the 
land. As a certain prominent man in Sta. Marta had 
exclaimed with a hollow laugh, once, when discussing 
the line of action taken by the Sulaco authorities at a 
time of political crisis — 

“You call these men Government oflScials.^ They? 


Ill 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 

Never! They are officials of the mine— officials of the 
Concession — I tell you.” 

The prominent man (who was then a person in power, 
with a lemon-coloured face and a very short and curly, 
not to say woolly, head of hair) went so far in his 
temporary discontent as to shake his yellow fist under 
the nose of his interlocutor, and shriek — 

“Yes! All! Silence! All! I tell you! The political 
Jefe, the chief of the police, the chief of the customs, the 
general, all, all, are the officials of that Gould.” 

Thereupon an intrepid but low and argumentative 
murmur would flow on for a space in the ministerial 
cabinet, and the prominent man’s passion would end 
in a cynical shrug of the shoulders. After all, he seemed 
to say, what did it matter as long as the minister himself 
was not forgotten during his brief day of authority.^ 
But all the same, the unofficial agent of the San Tome 
mine, working for a good cause, had his moments of 
anxiety, which were reflected in his letters to Don Jose 
Avellanos, his maternal uncle. 

“No sanguinary macaque from Sta. Marta shall set 
foot on that part of Costaguana which lies beyond the 
San Tome bridge,” Don Pepe, used to assure Mrs. 
Gould. “Except, of course, as an honoured guest — 
for our Senor Administrador is a deep politico.” But 
to Charles Gould, in his own room, the old Major would 
remark with a grim and soldierly cheeriness, “We are 
all playing our heads at this game.” 

Don Jose Avellanos would mutter “Imperium in 
imperio, Emilia, my soul,” with an air of profound self- 
satisfaction which, somehow, in a curious way, seemed 
to contain a queer admixture of bodily discomfort. 
But that, perhaps, could only be visible to the initiated. 

And for the initiated it was a wonderful place, this 
drawing-room of the Casa Gould, with its momentary 


112 


NOSTROMO 


glimpses of the master — El Senor Administrador^ — 
older, harder, mysteriously silent, with the lines 
deepened on his English, ruddy, out-of-doors com- 
plexion; flitting on his thin cavalryman’s legs across the 
doorways, either just “back from the mountain” 
or with jingling spurs and riding- whip under his arm, on 
the point of starting “for the mountain.” Then 
Don Pepe, modestly martial in his chair, the llanero 
who seemed somehow to have found his martial 
jocularity, his knowledge of the world, and his manner 
perfect for his station, in the midst of savage armed 
contests with his kind; Avellanos, polished and 
familiar, the diplomatist with his loquacity covering 
much caution and wisdom in delicate advice, with his 
manuscript of a historical work on Costaguana, 
entitled “Fifty Years of Misrule,” which, at present, he 
thought it was not prudent (even if it were possible) 
“to give to the world”; these three, and also Dona 
Emilia amongst them, gracious, small, and fairy-like, 
before the glittering tea-set, with one common master- 
thought in their heads, with one common feeling of a 
tense situation, with one ever-present aim to preserve 
the inviolable character of the mine at every cost. 
And there was also to be seen Captain Mitchell, a 
little apart, near one of the long windows, with an air 
of old-fashioned neat old bachelorhood about him, 
slightly pompous, in a white waistcoat, a little dis- 
regarded and unconscious of it; utterly in the dark, and 
imagining himself to be in the thick of things. The 
good man, having spent a clear thirty years of his life 
on the high seas before getting what he called a “shore 
billet,” was astonished at the importance of trans- 
actions (other than relating to shipping) which take 
place on dry land. Almost every event out of the 
usual daily course “marked an epoch” for him or else 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


113 


was “history”; unless with his pomposity struggling 
with a discomfited droop of his rubicund, rather hand- 
some face, set off by snow-white close hair and short 
whiskers, he would mutter — 

“Ah, that! That, sir, was a mistake.” 

The reception of the first consignment of San Tome 
silver for shipment to San Francisco in one of O.S.N. 
Co.’s mail-boats had, of course, “marked an epoch” for 
Captain Mitchell. The ingots packed in boxes of stiff 
ox-hide with plaited handles, small enough to be carried 
easily by two men, were brought down by the serenos of 
the mine walking in careful couples down the half- 
mile or so of steep, zigzag paths to the foot of the 
mountain. There they would be loaded into a string 
of two-wheeled carts, resembling roomy coffers with a 
door at the back, and harnessed tandem with two 
mules each, waiting under the guard of armed and 
mounted serenos. Don Pepe padlocked each door in 
succession, and at the signal of his whistle the string of 
carts would move off, closely surrounded by the clank 
of spur and carabine, with jolts and cracking of whips, 
with a sudden deep rumble over the boundary bridge 
(“into the land of thieves and sanguinary macaques,” 
Don Pepe defined that crossing); hats bobbing in the 
first light of the dawn, on the heads of cloaked figures; 
Winchesters on hip; bridle hands protruding lean and 
brown from under the falling folds of the ponchos. The 
convoy skirting a little wood, along the mine trail, be- 
tween the mud huts and low walls of Rincon, increased 
its pace on the camino real, mules urged to speed, escort 
galloping, Don Carlos riding alone ahead of a dust storm 
affording a vague vision of long ears of mules, of flut- 
tering little green and white flags stuck upon each cart; 
of raised arms in a mob of sombreros with the white 
gleam of ranging eyes; and Don Pepe, hardly visible in 


114 


NOSTROMO 


the rear of that rattling dust trail, with a stiff seat and 
impassive face, rising and falling rhythmically on an 
ewe-necked silver-bitted black brute with a hammer 
head. 

The sleepy people in the little clusters of huts, in the 
small ranchos near the road, recognized by the headlong 
sound the charge of the San Tome silver escort towards 
the crumbling wall of the city on the Campo side. 
They came to the doors to see it dash by over ruts and 
stones, with a clatter and clank and cracking of whips, 
with the reckless rush and precise driving of a field 
battery hurrying into action, and the solitary English 
figure of the Senor Administrador riding far ahead in 
the lead. 

In the fenced roadside paddocks loose horses galloped 
wildly for a while; the heavy cattle stood up breast deep 
in the grass, lowing mutteringly at the flying noise; a 
meek Indian villager would glance back once and 
hasten to shove his loaded little donkey bodily against 
a wall, out of the way of the San Tome silver escort 
going to the sea; a small knot of chilly leperos under the 
Stone Horse of the Alameda would mutter: “ Caramba !” 
on seeing it take a wide curve at a gallop and dart into 
the empty street of the Constitution; for it was con- 
sidered the correct thing, the only proper style by the 
mule-drivers of the San Tome mine to go through the 
waking town from end to end without a check in the 
speed as if chased by a devil. 

The early sunshine glowed on the delicate primrose, 
pale pink, pale blue fronts of the big houses with all 
their gates shut yet, and no face behind the iron bars 
of the windows. In the whole sunlit range of empty 
balconies along the street only one white figure would be 
visible high up above the clear pavement — the wife of 
the Senor Administrador — leaning over to see the escort 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


115 


go by to the harbour, a mass of heavy, fair hair twisted 
up negligently on her little head, and a lot of lace about 
the neck of her muslin wrapper. With a smile to her 
husband’s single, quick, upward glance, she would watch 
the whole thing stream past below her feet with an 
orderly uproar, till she answered by a friendly sign the 
salute of the galloping Don Pepe, the stiff, deferential 
inclination with a sweep of the hat below the knee. 

The string of padlocked carts lengthened, the size of 
the escort grew bigger as the years went on. Every 
three months an increasing stream of treasure swept 
through the streets of Sulaco on its way to the strong 
room in the O.S.N. Co.’s building by the harbour, 
there to await shipment for the North. Increasing in 
volume, and of immense value also; for, as Charles 
Gould told his wife once with some exultation, there had 
never been seen anything in the world to approach the 
vein of the Gould Concession. For them both, each 
passing of the escort under the balconies of the Casa 
Gould was like another victory gained in the conquest 
of peace for Sulaco. 

No doubt the initial action of Charles Gould had been 
helped at the beginning by a period of comparative 
peace which occurred just about that time; and also by 
the general softening of manners as compared with the 
epoch of civil wars whence had emerged the iron 
tyranny of Guzman Bento of fearful memory. In the 
contests that broke out at the end of his rule (which had 
kept peace in the country for a whole fifteen years) 
there was more fatuous imbecility, plenty of cruelty and 
suffering still, but much less of the old-time fierce and 
blindly ferocious political fanaticism. It was all more 
vile, more base, more contemptible, and infinitely more 
manageable in the very outspoken cynicism of motives. 
It was more clearly a brazen-faced scramble for a con- 


116 


NOSTROMO 


stantly diminishing quantity of booty; since all enter- 
prise had been stupidly killed in the land. Thus it 
came to pass that the province of Sulaco, once the field 
of cruel party vengeances, had become in a way one of 
the considerable prizes of political career. The great of 
the earth (in Sta. Marta) reserved the posts in the old 
Occidental State to those nearest and dearest to them : 
nephews, brothers, husbands of favourite sisters, bosom 
friends, trusty supporters — or prominent supporters of 
whom perhaps they were afraid. It was the blessed 
province of great opportunities and of largest salaries; 
for the San Tome mine had its own unofficial pay list, 
whose items and amounts, fixed in consultation by 
Charles Gould and Senor Avellanos, were known to a 
prominent business man in the United States, who for 
twenty minutes or so in every month gave his undivided 
attention to Sulaco affairs. At the same time the 
material interests of all sorts, backed up by the in- 
fluence of the San Tome mine, were quietly gathering 
substance in that part of the Republic. If, for instance, 
the Sulaco Collectorship was generally understood, in 
the political world of the capital, to open the way to the 
Ministry of Finance, and so on for every official post, 
then, on the other hand, the despondent business circles 
of the Republic had come to consider the Occidental 
Province as the promised land of safety, especially if a 
man managed to get on good terms with the adminis- 
tration of the mine. ‘‘Charles Gould; excellent fellow! 
Absolutely necessary to make sure of him before taking 
a single step. Get an introduction to him from Moraga 
if you can — the agent of the King of Sulaco, don’t you 
know.” 

No wonder, then, that Sir John, coming from Europe 
to smooth the path for his railway, had been meeting the 
name (and even the nickname) of Charles Gould at 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


117 


every turn in Costaguana. The agent of the San Tome 
Administration in Sta. Marta (a polished, well-informed 
gentleman, Sir John thought him) had certainly help‘ed 
so greatly in bringing about the presidential tour that he 
began to think that there was something in the faint 
whispers hinting at the immense occult influence of 
the Gould Concession. What was currently whispered 
was this — that the San Tome Administration had, in 
part, at least, financed the last revolution, which had 
brought into a five-year dictatorship Don Vincente 
Ribiera, a man of culture and of unblemished character, 
invested with a mandate of reform by the best elements 
of the State. Serious, well-informed men seemed to 
believe the fact, to hope for better things, for the 
establishment of legality, of good faith and order in 
public life. So much the better, then, thought Sir John. 
He worked always on a great scale; there was a loan to 
the State, and a project for systematic colonization of 
the Occidental Province, involved in one vast scheme 
with the construction of the National Central Railway. 
Good faith, order, honesty, peace, were badly wanted 
for this great development of material interests. Any- 
body on the side of these things, and especially if able 
to help, had an importance in Sir John’s eyes. He had 
not been disappointed in the “King of Sulaco.” The 
local difficulties had fallen away, as the engineer-in-chief 
had foretold they would, before Charles Gould’s medi- 
ation. Sir John had been extremely feted in Sulaco, 
next to the President-Dictator, a fact which might have 
accounted for the evident ill-humour General Montero 
displayed at lunch given on board the J uno just before 
she was to sail, taking away from Sulaco the President- 
Dictator and the distinguished foreign guests in his 
train. 

The Excellentissimo (“the hope of honest men,” as 


m 


NOSTROMO 


Don Jose had addressed him in a public speech delivered 
in the name of the Provincial Assembly of Sulaco) sat at 
the head of the long table; Captain Mitchell, positively 
stony-eyed and purple in the face with the solemnity of 
this “historical event,” occupied the foot as the repre- 
sentative of the O.S.N. Company m Sulaco, the hosts of 
that informal function, with the captain of the ship and 
some minor officials from the shore around him. Those 
cheery, swarthy little gentlemen cast jovial side-glances 
at the bottles of champagne beginning to pop behind 
the guests’ backs in the hands of the ship’s stewards. 
The amber wine creamed up to the rims of the glasses. 

Charles Gould had his place next to a foreign envoy, 
who, in a listless undertone, had been talking to him 
fitfully of hunting and shooting. The well-nourished, 
pale face, with an eyeglass and drooping yellow mous- 
tache, made the Senor Administrador appear by con- 
trast twice as sunbaked, more fiaming red, a hundred 
times more intensely and silently alive. Don Jose 
Avellanos touched elbows with the other foreign diplo- 
mat, a dark man with a quiet, watchful, self-confident 
demeanour, and a touch of reserve. Ail etiquette being 
laid aside on the occasion. General Montero was the 
only one there in full uniform, so stiff with embroideries 
in front that his broad chest seemed protected by a 
cuirass of gold. Sir John at the beginning had got 
away from high places for the sake of sitting near Mrs. 
Gould. 

The great financier was trying to express to her his 
grateful sense of her hospitality and of his obligation to 
her husband’s “enormous influence in this part of the 
country,” when she interrupted him by a low “Hush!” 
The President was going to make an informal pro- 
nouncement. 

The Excellentissimo was on his legs. He said only a 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


119 


few words, evidently deeply felt, and meant perhaps 
mostly for Avellanos — ^his old friend — as to the necessity 
of unremitting effort to secure the lasting welfare of the 
country emerging after this last struggle, he hoped, into 
a period of peace and material prosperity. 

Mrs. Gould, listening to the mellow, slightly mourn- 
ful voice, looking at this rotund, dark, spectacled face, 
at the short body, obese to the point of infirmity, 
thought that this man of delicate and melancholy mind, 
physically almost a cripple, coming out of his retire- 
ment into a dangerous strife at the call of his fellows, 
had the right to speak with the authority of his self- 
sacrifice. And yet she was made uneasy. He was 
more pathetic than promising, this first civilian Chief of 
the State Costaguana had ever known, pronouncing, 
glass in hand, his simple watchwords of honesty, peace, 
respect for law, political good faith abroad and at 
home — the safeguards of national honour. 

He sat down. During the respectful, appreciative 
buzz of voices that followed the speech. General 
Montero raised a pair of heavy, drooping eyelids and 
rolled his eyes with a sort of uneasy dullness from face 
to face. The military backwoods hero of the party, 
though secretly impressed by the sudden novelties and 
splendours of his position (he had never been on board a 
ship before, and had hardly ever seen the sea except 
from a distance), understood by a sort of instinct the 
advantage his surly, unpolished attitude of a savage 
fighter gave him amongst all these refined Blanco 
aristocrats. But why was it that nobody was looking 
at him.^ he wondered to himself angrily. He was able 
to spell out the print of newspapers, and knew that he 
had performed the “greatest military exploit of modern 
times.” 

“My husband wanted the railway,” Mrs. Gould said 


120 


NOSTROMO 


to Sir John in the general murmur of resumed con- 
versations. “All this brings nearer the sort of future we 
desire for the country, which has waited for it in sorrow 
long enough, God knows. But I will confess that the 
other day, during my afternoon drive when I suddenly 
saw an Indian boy ride out of a wood with the red flag of 
a surveying party in his hand, I felt something of a 
shock. The future means change — an utter change. 
And yet even here there are simple and picturesque 
things that one would like to preserve.” 

Sir John listened, smiling. But it was his turn now 
to hush Mrs. Gould. 

“General Montero is going to speak,” he whispered, 
and almost immediately added, in comic alarm, “Heav- 
ens! he’s going to propose my own health, I believe.” 

General Montero had risen with a jingle of steel 
scabbard and a ripple of glitter on his gold-embroidered 
breast; a heavy sword-hilt appeared at his side above 
the edge of the table. In this gorgeous uniform, with 
his bull neck, his hooked nose flattened on the tip upon 
a blue-black, dyed moustache, he looked like a disguised 
and sinister vaquero. The drone of his voice had a 
strangely rasping, soulless ring. He floundered, lower- 
ing, through a few vague sentences; then suddenly 
raising his big head and his voice together, burst out 
harshly — 

“The honour of the country is in the hands of the 
army. I assure you I shall be faithful to it.” He 
hesitated till his roaming eyes met Sir John’s face upon 
which he fixed a lurid, sleepy glance; and the figure of 
the lately negotiated loan came into his mind. He 
lifted his glass. “I drink to the health of the man who 
brings us a million and a half of pounds.” 

He tossed off his champagne, and sat down heavily 
with a half-surprised, half-bullying look all round the 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


121 


faces in the profound, as if appalled, silence which 
succeeded the felicitous toast. Sir John did not move. 

“I don’t think I am called upon to rise,” he mur- 
mured to Mrs. Gould. “That sort of thing speaks for 
itself.” But Don Jose Avellanos came to the rescue 
with a short oration, in which he alluded pointedly to 
England’s goodwill towards Costaguana — “a goodwill,” 
he continued, significantly, “of which I, having been in 
my time accredited to the Court of St. James, am able 
to speak with some knowledge.” 

Only then Sir John thought fit to respond, which he 
did gracefully in bad French, punctuated by bursts of 
applause and the “ Hear ! Hears ! ” of Captain Mitchell, 
who was able to understand a word now and then. 
Directly he had done, the financier of railways turned to 
Mrs. Gould — 

“You were good enough to say that you intended to 
ask me for something,” he reminded her, gallantly. 
“What is it.f^ Be assured that any request from you 
would be considered in the light of a favour to myself.” 

She thanked him by a gracious smile. Everybody 
was rising from the table. 

“Let us go on deck,” she proposed, “where I’ll be 
able to point out to you the very object of my request.” 

An enormous national flag of Costaguana, diagonal 
red and yellow, with two green palm trees in the middle, 
floated lazily at the mainmast head of the Juno. A 
multitude of fireworks being let off in their thousands 
at the water’s edge in honour of the President kept up a 
mysterious crepitating noise half round the harbour. 
Now and then a lot of rockets, swishing upwards in- 
visibly, detonated overhead with only a puff of smoke 
in the bright sky. Crowds of people could be seen 
between the town gate and the harbour, under the 
bunches of multicoloured flags fluttering on tall poles. 


NOSTROMO 


m 

Faint bursts of military music would be heard suddenly, 
and the remote sound of shouting. A knot of ragged 
negroes at the end of the wharf kept on loading and 
firing a small iron cannon time after time. A greyish 
haze of dust hung thin and motionless against the sun. 

Don Vincente Ribiera made a few steps under the 
deck-awning, leaning on the arm of Senor Avellanos; a 
wide circle was formed round him, where the mirthless 
smile of his dark lips and the sightless glitter of his 
spectacles could be seen turning amiably from side to 
side. The informal function arranged on purpose on 
board the Juno tg give the President-Dictator an op- 
portunity to meet intimately some of his most notable 
adherents in Sulaco was drawing to an end. On one 
side. General Montero, his bald head covered now by a 
plumed cocked hat, remained motionless on a skylight 
seat, a pair of big gauntleted hands folded on the hilt 
of the sabre standing upright between his legs. The 
white plume, the coppery tint of his broad face, the 
blue-black of the moustaches under the curved beak, 
the mass of gold on sleeves and breast, the high shining 
boots with enormous spurs, the working nostrils, the 
imbecile and domineering stare of the glorious victor 
of Rio Seco had in them something ominous and in- 
credible; the exaggeration of a cruel caricature, the 
fatuity of solemn masquerading, the atrocious grotes- 
queness of some military idol of Aztec conception and 
European bedecking, awaiting the homage of wor- 
shippers. Don Jose approached diplomatically this 
weird and inscrutable portent, and Mrs. Gould turned 
her fascinated eyes away at last. 

Charles, coming up to take leave of Sir John, heard 
him say, as he bent over his wife’s hand, “Certainly. 
Of course, my dear Mrs. Gould, for a 'protege of yours! 
Not the slightest difficulty. Consider it done.” 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


123 


Going ashore in the same boat with the Goulds, Don 
Jose Avellanos was very silent. Even in the Gould 
carriage he did not open his lips for a long time. The 
mules trotted slowly away from the wharf between the 
extended hands of the beggars, who for that day seemed 
to have abandoned in a body the portals of churches. 
Charles Gould sat on the back seat and looked away 
upon the plain. A multitude of booths made of green 
boughs, of rushes, of odd pieces of plank eked out with 
bits of canvas had been erected all over it for the sale of 
cana, of dulces, of fruit, of cigars. Over little heaps of 
glowing charcoal Indian women, squatting on mats, 
cooked food in black earthen pots, and boiled the water 
for the mate gourds, which they offered in soft, caressing 
voices to the country people. A racecourse had been 
staked out for the vaqueros; and away to the left, from 
where the crowd was massed thickly about a huge 
temporary erection, like a circus tent of wood with a 
conical grass roof, came the resonant twanging of harp 
strings, the sharp ping of guitars, with the grave drum- 
ming throb of an Indian gombo pulsating steadily 
through the shrill choruses of the dancers. 

Charles Gould said presently — 

‘‘All this piece of land belongs now to€he Railway 
Company. There will be no more popular feasts held 
here.” 

Mrs. Gould was rather sorry to think so. She took 
this opportunity to mention how she had just obtained 
from Sir John the promise that the house occupied by 
Giorgio Viola should not be interfered with. She 
declared she could never understand why the survey 
engineers ever talked of demolishing that old building. 
It was not in the way of the projected harbour branch 
of the line in the least. 

She stopped the carriage before the door to reassure at 


NOSTROMO 


once the old Genoese, who came out bare-headed and 
stood by the carriage step. She talked to him in 
Italian, of course, and he thanked her with calm dignity. 
An old Garibaldino was grateful to her from the bottom 
of his heart for keeping the roof over the heads of his 
wife and children. He was too old to wander any more. 

“And is it for ever, signora.^” he asked. 

“For as long as you like.” 

“Bene. Then the place must be named. It was not 
worth while before.” 

He smiled ruggedly, with a running together of 
wrinkles at the corners of his eyes. “I shall set about 
the painting of the name to-morrow.” 

“And what is it going to be, Giorgio 

“Albergo dTtalia Una,” said the old Garibaldino, 
looking away for a moment. “More in memory of 
those who have died,” he added, “than for the country 
stolen from us soldiers of liberty by the craft of that 
accursed Piedmontese race of kings and ministers.” 

Mrs. Gould smiled slightly, and, bending over a 
little, began to inquire about his wife and children. He 
had sent them into town on that day. The padrona 
was better in health; many thanks to the signora for 
inquiring. 

People were passing in twos and threes, in whole 
parties of men and women attended by trotting chil- 
dren. A horseman mounted on a silver-grey mare drew 
rein quietly in the shade of the house after taking off his 
hat to the party in the carriage, who returned smiles 
and familiar nods. Old Viola, evidently very pleased 
with the news he had just heard, interrupted himself for 
a moment to tell him rapidly that the house was secured, 
by the kindness of the English signora, for as long as he 
liked to keep it. The other listened attentively, but 
made no response. 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE m 

When the carriage moved on he took off his hat again, 
a grey sombrero with a silver cord and tassels. The 
bright colours of a Mexican serape twisted on the cantle, 
the enormous silver buttons on the embroidered leather 
jacket, the row of tiny silver buttons down the seam of the 
trousers, the snowy linen, a silk sash with embroidered 
ends, the silver plates on headstall and saddle, proclaimed 
the unapproachable style of the famous Capataz de 
Cargadores — a Mediterranean sailor — ^got up with more 
finished splendour than any well-to-do young ranchero 
of the Campo had ever displayed on a high holiday. 

“It is a great thing for me,” murmured old Giorgio, 
still thinking of the house, for now he had grown weary 
of change. “The signora just said a word to the 
Englishman.” 

“The old Englishman who has enough money to pay 
for a railway.^ He is going off in an hour,” remarked 
Nostromo, carelessly. “Buon viaggio, then. IVe 
guarded his bones all the way from the Entrada pass 
down to the plain and into Sulaco, as though he had 
been my own father.” 

Old Giorgio only moved his head sideways absently. 
Nostromo pointed after the Goulds’ carriage, nearing 
the grass-grown gate in the old town wall that was like 
a wall of matted jungle. 

“And I have sat alone at night with my revolver in 
the Company’s warehouse time and again by the side of 
that other Englishman’s heap of silver, guarding it as 
though it had been my own.” 

Viola seemed lost in thought. “ It is a great thing for 
me,” he repeated again, as if to himself. 

“It is,” agreed the magnificent Capataz de Carga- 
dores, calmly. “Listen, Vecchio— go in and bring me 
out a cigar, but don’t look for it in my room. There’s 
nothing there.” 


NOSTROMO 


1^6 

Viola stepped into the cafe and came out directly, 
still absorbed in his idea, and tendered him a cigar, 
mumbling thoughtfully in his moustache, “Children 
growing up — and girls, too! Girls!” He sighed and 
fell silent. 

“What, only one.^” remarked Nostromo, looking 
down with a sort of comic inquisitiveness at the un- 
conscious old man. “No matter,” he added, with lofty 
negligence; “one is enough till another is wanted.” 

He lit it and let the match drop from his passive 
fingers. Giorgio Viola looked up, and said abruptly — 

“My son would have been just such a fine young man 
as you, Gian’ Battista, if he had lived.” 

“What.f^ Your son.^ But you are right, padrone. 
If he had been like me he would have been a man.” 

He turned his horse slowly, and paced on between the 
booths, checking the mare almost to a standstill now 
and then for children, for the groups of people from the 
distant Campo, who stared after him with admiration. 
The Company’s lightermen saluted him from afar; and 
the greatly envied Capataz de Cargadores advanced, 
amongst murmurs of recognition and obsequious greet- 
ings, towards the huge circus-like erection. The throng 
thickened; the guitars tinkled louder; other horsemen 
sat motionless, smoking calmly above the heads of the 
crowd; it eddied and pushed before the doors of the 
high-roofed building, whence issued a shuffle and 
thumping of feet in time to the dance music vibrating 
and shrieking with a racking rhythm, overhung by the 
tremendous, sustained, hollow roar of the gombo. The 
barbarous and imposing noise of the big drum, that 
can madden a crowd, and that even European^ cannot 
hear without a strange emotion, seemed to draw 
Nostromo on to its source, while a man, wrapped up in 
a faded, torn poncho, walked by his stirrup, and. 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 127 

buffeted right and left, begged “his worship” in- 
sistently for employment on the wharf. He whined, 
offering the Senor Capataz half his daily pay for the 
privilege of being admitted to the swaggering fraternity 
of Cargadores; the other half would be enough for him, 
he protested. But Captain MitchelFs right-hand man — 
“invaluable for our work — a perfectly incorruptible 
fellow” — after looking down critically at the ragged 
mozo, shook his head without a word in the uproar 
going on around. 

The man fell back; and a little further on Nostromo 
had to pull up. From the doors of the dance hall men 
and women emerged tottering, streaming with sweat, 
trembling in every limb, to lean, panting, with staring 
eyes and parted lips, against the wall of the structure, 
where the harps and guitars played on with mad speed 
in an incessant roll of thunder. Hundreds of hands 
clapped in there; voices shrieked, and then all at once 
would sink low, chanting in unison the refrain of a love 
song, with a dying fall. A red flower, flung with a good 
aim from somewhere in the crowd, struck the resplen- 
dent Capataz on the cheek. 

He caught it as it fell, neatly, but for some time did 
not turn his head. When at last he condescended to 
look round, the throng near him had parted to make 
way for a pretty Morenita, her hair held up by a small 
golden comb, who was walking towards him in the open 
space. 

Her arms and neck emerged plump and bare from a 
snowy chemisette; the blue woollen skirt, with all the 
fullness gathered in front, scanty on the hips and tight 
across the back, disclosed the provoking action of her 
walk. She came straight on and laid her hand on the 
mare’s neck with a timid, coquettish look upwards out 
of the corner of her eyes. 


128 


NOSTROMO 


“Querido,” she murmured, caressingly, “why do you 
pretend not to see me when I pass?” 

“Because I don’t love thee any more,” said Nostromo, 
deliberately, after a moment of reflective silence. 

The hand on the mare’s neck trembled suddenly. 
She dropped her head before all the eyes in the wide 
circle formed round the generous, the terrible, the in- 
constant Capataz de Cargadores, and his Morenita. 

Nostromo, looking down, saw tears beginning to 
fall down her face. 

“Has it come, then, ever beloved of my heart?” she 
whispered. “Is it true?” 

“No,” said Nostromo, looking away carelessly. “It 
was a lie. I love thee as much as ever.” 

“Is that true?” she cooed, joyously, her cheeks still 
wet with tears. 

“It is true.” 

“True on the life?” 

“As true as that; but thou must not ask me to swear 
it on the Madonna that stands in thy room.” And the 
Capataz laughed a little in response to the grins of the 
crowd. 

She pouted — very pretty — a little uneasy. 

“No, I will not ask for that. I can see love in your 
eyes.” She laid her hand on his knee. “Why are you 
trembling like this? From love?” she continued, 
while the cavernous thundering of the gombo went on 
without a pause. “But if you love her as much as that, 
you must give your Paquita a gold-mounted rosary of 
beads for the neck of her Madonna.” 

“No,” said Nostromo, looking into her uplifted, 
begging eyes, which suddenly turned stony with surprise. 

“No? Then what else will your worship give me on 
the day of the fiesta?” she asked, angrily; “so as not to 
shame me before all these people,” 


129 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 

“There is no shame for thee in getting nothing from 
thy lover for once.” 

“True! The shame is your worship’s — my poor 
lover’s,” she flared up, sarcastically. 

Laughs were heard at her anger, at her retort. What 
an audacious spitfire she was! The people aware of 
this scene were calling out urgently to others in the 
crowd. The circle round the silver-grey mare narrowed 
slowly. 

The girl went off a pace or two, confronting the mock- 
ing curiosity of the eyes, then flung back to the stirrup, 
tiptoeing, her enraged face turned up to Nostromo with 
a pair of blazing eyes. He bent low to her in the sad- 
dle. 

“Juan,” she hissed, “I could stab thee to the heart!” 

The dreaded Capataz de Cargadores, magnificent and 
carelessly public in his amours, flung his arm round her 
neck and kissed her spluttering lips. A murmur went 
round. 

“A knife!” he demanded at large, holding her firmly 
by the shoulder. 

Twenty blades flashed out together in the circle. A 
young man in holiday attire, bounding in, thrust one in 
Nostromo’s hand and bounded back into the ranks, very 
proud of himself. Nostromo had not even looked at 
him. 

“Stand on my foot,” he commanded the girl, who, 
suddenly subdued, rose lightly, and when he had her up, 
encircling her waist, her face near to his, he pressed the 
knife into her little hand. 

“No, Morenita! You shall not put me to shame,” 
he said. “You shall have your present; and so that 
everyone should know who is your lover to-day, you 
may cut all the silver buttons off my coat.” 

There were shouts of laughter and applause at this 


130 


NOSTROMO 


witty freak, while the girl passed the keen blade, and 
the impassive rider jingled in his palm the increasing 
hoard of silver buttons. He eased her to the ground 
with both her hands full. After whispering for a while 
with a very strenuous face, she walked away, staring 
haughtily, and vanished into the crowd. 

The circle had broken up, and the lordly Capataz de 
Cargadores, the indispensable man, tljie tried and trusty 
Nostromo, the Mediterranean sailor come ashore 
casually to try his luck in Costaguana, rode slowly 
towards the harbour. The Juno was just then swing- 
ing round; and even as Nostromo reined up again to 
look on, a flag ran up on the improvised flagstaff erected 
in an ancient and dismantled little fort at the harbour 
entrance. Half a battery of field guns had been hur- 
ried over there from the Sulaco barracks for the 
purpose of firing the regulation salutes for the President- 
Dictator and the War Minister. As the mail-boat 
headed through the pass, the badly timed reports 
announced the end of Don Vincente Ribiera’s first 
official visit to Sulaco, and for Captain Mitchell the end 
of another “historic occasion.” Next time when the 
“Hope of honest men” was to come that way, a year 
and a half later, it was unofficially, over the mountain 
tracks, fleeing after a defeat on a lame mule, to be only 
just saved by Nostromo from an ignominious death at 
the hands of a mob. It was a very different event, of 
which Captain Mitchell used to say — 

“It was history — history, sir! And that fellow of 
mine, Nostromo, you know, was right in it. Absolutely 
making history, sir.” 

But this event, creditable to Nostromo, was to lead 
immediately to another, which could not be classed 
either as “history” or as “a mistake” in Captain 
Mitchell’s phraseology. He had another word for it. 


THE SILVER OF THE MINE 


131 


“Sir,’’ he used to say afterwards, “that was no mis- 
take. It was a fatality. A misfortune, pure and 
simple, sir. . And that poor fellow of mine was right in 
it — right in the middle of it! A fatality, if ever there 
was one — and to my mind he has never been the same 
man since.” 



/ 


PART SECOND 

THE ISABELS 


i 



CHAPTER ONE 


Through good and evil report in the varying fortune 
of that struggle which Don Jose had characterized in 
the phrase, “the fate of national honesty trembles in the 
balance,” the Gould Concession, “Imperium in Im- 
perio,” had gone on working; the square mountain had 
gone on pouring its treasure down the wooden shoots 
to the unresting batteries of stamps; the lights of San 
Tome had twinkled night after night upon the great, 
limitless shadow of the Campo; every three months 
the silver escort had gone down to the sea as if neither 
the war nor its consequences could ever affect the 
ancient Occidental State secluded beyond its high 
barrier of the Cordillera. All the fighting took place 
on the other side of that mighty wall of serrated peaks 
lorded over by the white dome of Higuerota and as yet 
unbreached by the railway, of which only the first part, 
the easy Campo part from Sulaco to the Ivie Valley at 
the foot of the pass, had been laid. Neither did the 
telegraph line cross the mountains yet; its poles, like 
slender beacons on the plain, penetrated into the forest 
fringe of the foot-hills cut by the deep avenue of the 
track; and its wire ended abruptly in the construction 
camp at a white deal table supporting a Morse ap- 
paratus, in a long hut of planks with a corrugated iron 
roof overshadowed by gigantic cedar trees — the quar- 
ters of the engineer in charge of the advance section. 

The harbour was busy, too, with the traffic in rail- 
way material, and with the movements of troops along 
the coast. The O.S.N. Company found much occupa- 

135 


136 


NOSTROMO 


tion for its fleet. Costaguana had no navy, and, apart 
from a few coastguard cutters, there were no national 
ships except a. couple of old merchant steamers used as 
transports. 

Captain Mitchell, feeling more and more in the thick 
of history, found time for an hour or so during an 
afternoon in the drawing-room of the Casa Gould, 
where, with a strange ignorance of the real forces at 
work around him, he professed himself delighted to get 
away from the strain of affairs. He did not know what 
he would have done without his invaluable Nostromo, 
he declared. Those confounded Costaguana politics 
gave him more work — he confided to Mrs. Gould — 
than he had bargained for. 

Don Jose Avellanos had displayed in the service of the 
endangered Ribiera Government an organizing activity 
and an eloquence of which the echoes reached even 
Europe. For, after the new loan to the Ribiera Govern- 
ment, Europe had become interested in Costaguana. 
The Sala of the Provincial Assembly (in the Municipal 
Buildings of Sulaco), with its portraits of the Liberators 
on the walls and an old flag of Cortez preserved in a 
glass case above the President’s chair, had heard all 
these speeches — the early one containing the im- 
passioned declaration “Militarism is the enemy,” the 
famous one of the “trembling balance” delivered on 
the occasion of the vote for the raising of a second 
Sulaco regiment in the defence of the reforming Govern- 
ment; and when the provinces again displayed their 
old flags (proscribed in Guzman Bento’s time) there 
was another of those great orations, when Don Jose 
greeted these old emblems of the war of Independence, 
brought out again in the name of new Ideals. The 
old idea of Federalism had disappeared. For his part 
he did not wish to revive old political doctrines. They 


THE ISABELS 


137 


were perishable. They died. But the doctrine of 
political rectitude was immortal. The second Sulaco 
regiment, to whom he was presenting this flag, was going 
to show its valour in a contest for order, peace, progress; 
for the establishment of national self-respect without 
which — he declared with energy — “ we are a reproach 
and a byword amongst the powers of the world.” 

Don Jose Avellanos loved his country. He had 
served it lavishly with his fortune during his diplomatic 
career, and the later story of his captivity and bar- 
barous ill-usage under Gvizman Bento was well known 
to his listeners. It was a wonder that he had not been 
a victim of the ferocious and summary executions which 
marked the course of that tyranny; for Guzman had 
ruled the country with the sombre imbecility of political 
fanaticism. The power of Supreme Government had 
become in his dull mind an object of strange worship, as 
if it were some sort of cruel deity. It was incarnated in 
himself, and his adversaries, the Federalists, were the 
supreme sinners, objects of hate, abhorrence, and fear, 
as heretics would be to a convinced Inquisitor. For 
years he had carried about at the tail of the Army of 
Pacification, all over the country, a captive band of 
such atrocious criminals, who considered themselves 
most unfortunate at not having been summarily exe- 
cuted. It was a diminishing company of nearly naked 
skeletons, loaded with irons, covered with dirt, with 
vermin, with raw wounds, all men of position, of educa- 
tion, of wealth, who had learned to fight amongst them- 
selves for scraps of rotten beef thrown to them by 
soldiers, or to beg a negro cook for a drink of muddy 
water in pitiful accents. Don Jose Avellanos, clanking 
his chains amongst the others, seemed only to exist in 
order to prove how much hunger, pain, degradation, 
and cruel torture a human body can stand without 


138 


NOSTROMO 


parting with the last spark of life. Sometimes interroga- 
tories, backed by some primitive method of torture, 
were administered to them by a commission of officers 
hastily assembled in a hut of sticks and branches, and 
made pitiless by the fear for their own lives. A lucky 
one or two of that spectral company of prisoners would 
perhaps be led tottering behind a bush to be shot by a 
file of soldiers. Always an army chaplain — some un- 
shaven, dirty man, girt with a sword and with a tiny 
cross embroidered in white cotton on the left breast of a 
lieutenant’s uniform — would follow, cigarette in the 
corner of the mouth, wooden stool in hand, to hear the 
confession and give absolution; for the Citizen Saviour 
of the Country (Guzman Bento was called thus officially 
in petitions) was not averse from the exercise of rational 
clemency. The irregular report of the firing squad 
would be heard, followed sometimes by a single finish- 
ing shot; a little bluish cloud of smoke would float up 
above the green bushes, and the Army of Pacification 
would move on over the savannas, through the forests, 
crossing rivers, invading rural pueblos, devastating the 
haciendas of the horrid aristocrats, occupying the in- 
land towns in the fulfilment of its patriotic mission, and 
leaving behind a united land wherein the evil taint of 
Federalism could no longer be detected in the smoke of 
burning houses and the smell of spilt blood. 

Don Jose Avellanos had survived that time. 

Perhaps, when contemptuously signifying to him his 
release, the Citizen Saviour of the Country might have 
thought this benighted aristocrat too broken in health 
and spirit and fortune to be any longer dangerous. Or, 
perhaps, it may have been a simple caprice. Guzman 
Bento, usually full of fanciful fears and brooding sus- 
picions, had sudden accesses of unreasonable self- 
confidence when he perceived himself elevated on a 


THE ISABELS 


139 


pinnacle of power and safety beyond the reach of mere 
mortal plotters. At such times he would impulsively 
command the celebration of a solemn Mass of thanks- 
giving, which would be sung in great pomp in the 
cathedral of Sta. Marta by the trembling, subservient 
Archbishop of his creation. He heard it sitting in a 
gilt armchair placed before the high altar, surrounded 
by the civii and military heads of his Government'. 
The unofficial world of Sta. Marta would crowd into 
the cathedral, for it was not quite safe for anybody of 
mark to stay away from these manifestations of presi- 
dential piety. Having thus acknowledged the only 
power he was at all disposed to recognize as above him- 
self, he would scatter acts of political grace in a sardonic 
wantonness of clemency. There was no other way left 
now to enjoy his power but by seeing his crushed 
adversaries crawl impotently into the light of day out of 
the dark, noisome cells of the Collegio. Their harmless- 
ness fed his insatiable vanity, and they could always be 
got hold of again. It was the rule for all the women of 
their families to present thanks afterwards in a special 
audience. The incarnation of that strange god: El 
Gobierno Supremo, received them standing, cocked 
hat on head, and exhorted them in a menacing mutter 
to show their gratitude by bringing up their children in 
fidelity to the democratic form of government, “which 
I have established for the happiness of our country.” 
His front teeth having been knocked out in some ac- 
cident of his former herdsman’s life, his utterance was 
spluttering and indistinct. He had been working for 
Costaguana alone in the midst of treachery and op- 
position. Let it cease now lest he should become 
weary of forgiving! 

Doi> Jose Avellanos had known this forgiveness. 

He was broken in health and fortune deplorably 


140 


NOSTROMO 


enough to present a truly gratifying spectacle to the 
supreme chief of democratic institutions. He retired 
to Sulaco. His wife had an estate in that province, and 
she nursed him back to life out of the house of death and 
captivity. When she died, their daughter, an only 
child, was old enough to devote herself to “poor papa.” 
, Miss Avellanos, born in Europe and educated partly 
in England, was a tall, grave girl, with a s^f -possessed 
manner, a wide, white forehead, a wealth of rich brown 
hair, and blue eyes. 

The other young ladies of Sulaco stood in awe of her 
character and accomplishments. She was reputed to 
be terribly learned and serious. As to pride, it was 
well known that all the Corbelans were proud, and her 
mother was a Corbelan. Don Jose Avellanos depended 
very much upon the devotion of his beloved Antonia. 
He accepted it in the benighted way of men, who, 
though made in God’s image, are like stone idols without 
sense before the smoke of certain burnt offerings. He 
was ruined in every way, but a man possessed of pas- 
sion is not a bankrupt in life. Don Jose Avellanos 
desired passionately for his country: peace, prosperity, 
and (as the end of the preface to “Fifty Years of Mis- 
rule” has it) “an honourable place in the comity of 
civilized nations.” In this last phrase the Minister 
Plenipotentiary, cruelly humiliated by the bad faith 
of his Government towards the foreign bondholders, 
stands disclosed in the patriot. 

The fatuous turmoil of greedy factions succeeding the 
tyranny of Guzman Bento seemed to bring his desire to 
the very door of opportunity. He was too old to 
descend personally into the centre of the arena at Sta. 
Marta. But the men who acted there sought his ad- 
vice at every step. He himself thought that he could 
be most useful at a distance, in Sulaco. His name, his 


THE ISABELS 


141 


connections, his former position, his experience com- 
manded the respect of his class. The discovery that 
this man, living in dignified poverty in the Corbelan 
town residence (opposite the Casa Gould), could dis- 
pose of material means towards the support of the 
cause Increased his influence. It was his open letter of 
appeal that decided the candidature of Don Vincente 
Ribiera for the Presidency. Another of these informal 
State papers drawn up by Don Jose (this time in the 
shape of an address from the Province) induced that 
scrupulous constitutionalist to accept the extraordinary 
powers conferred upon him for five years by an over- 
whelming vote of congress in Sta. Marta. It was a 
specific mandate to establish the prosperity of the 
people on the basis of firm peace at home, and to redeem 
the national credit by the satisfaction of all just claims 
abroad. 

In the afternoon the news of that vote had reached 
Sulaco by the usual roundabout postal way through 
Cayta, and up the coast by steamer. Don Jose, who 
had been waiting for the mail in the Goulds’ drawing- 
room, got out of the rocking-chair, letting his hat fall 
off his knees. He rubbed his silvery, short hair with 
both hands, speechless with the excess of joy. 

“Emilia, my soul,” he had burst out, “let me em- 
brace you! Let me ” 

Captain Mitchell, had he been there, would no doubt 
have made an apt remark about the dawn of a new era; 
but if Don Jose thought something of the kind, his 
eloquence failed him on this occasion. The inspirer of 
that revival of the Blanco party tottered where he 
stood. Mrs. Gould moved forward quickly and, as she 
offered her cheek with a smile to her old friend, managed 
very cleverly to give him the support of her arm he 
really needed. 


142 


NOSTROMO 


Don Jose had recovered himself at once, but for a 
time he could do no more than murmur, ‘‘Oh, you two 
patriots ! Oh, you two patriots ! ” — looking from one to 
the other. Vague plans of another historical work, 
wherein all the devotions to the regeneration of the 
country he loved would be enshrined for the reverent 
worship of posterity, flitted through his mind. The 
historian who had enough elevation of soul to write of 
Guzman Bento: “Yet this monster, imbrued in the 
blood of his countrymen, must not be held unreservedly 
to the execration of future years. It appears to be 
true that he, too, loved his country. He had given it 
twelve years of peace; and, absolute master of lives and 
fortunes as he was, he died poor. His worst fault, per- 
haps, was not his ferocity, but his ignorance;” the man 
who could write thus of a cruel persecutor (the passage 
occurs in his “History of Misrule”) felt at the fore- 
shadowing of success an almost boundless affection for 
his two helpers, for these two young people from over 
the sea. 

Just as years ago, calmly, from the conviction of 
practical necessity, stronger than any abstract political 
doctrine, Henry Gould had drawn the sword, so now, 
the times being changed, Charles Gould had flung the 
silver of the San Tome into the fray. The Inglez of 
Sulaco, the “Costaguana Englishman” of the third 
generation, was as far from being a political intriguer as 
his uncle from a revolutionary swashbuckler. Spring- 
ing from the instinctive uprightness of their natures 
their action was reasoned. They saw an opportunity 
and used the weapon to hand. 

Charles Gould’s position — a commanding position in 
the background of that attempt to retrieve the peace 
and the credit of the Republic — was very clear. At the 
beginning he had had to accommodate himself to exist- 


THE ISABELS 


14S 


ing circumstances of corruption so naively brazen as to 
disarm the hatred of a man courageous enough not to be 
afraid of its irresponsible potency to ruin everything it 
touched. It seemed to him too contemptible for hot 
anger even. He made use of it with a cold, fearless 
scorn, manifested rather than concealed by the forms 
of stony courtesy which did away with much of the 
ignominy of the situation. At bottom, perhaps, he 
suffered from it, for he was not a man of cowardly 
illusions, but he refused to discuss the ethical view with 
his wife. He trusted that, though a little disenchanted, 
she would be intelligent enough to understand that his 
character safeguarded the enterprise of their lives 
as much or more than his policy. The extraordinary 
development of the mine had put a great power into his 
hands. To feel that prosperity always at the mercy of 
unintelligent greed had grown irksome to him. To 
Mrs. Gould it was humiliating. At any rate, it was 
dangerous. In the confidential communications pass- 
ing between Charles Gould, the King of Sulaco, and the 
head of the silver and steel interests far away in Cali- 
fornia, the conviction was growing that any attempt 
made by men of education and integrity ought to be 
discreetly supported. “You may tell your friend 
Avellanos that I think so,” Mr. Holroyd had written 
at the proper moment from his inviolable sanctuary 
within the eleven-storey high factory of great affairs. 
And shortly afterwards, with a credit opened by the 
Third Southern Bank (located next door but one to the 
Holroyd Building), the Ribierist party in Costaguana 
took a practical shape under the eye of the administra- 
tor of the San Tome mine. And Don Jose, the heredi- 
tary friend of the Gould family, could say: “Perhaps, 
my dear Carlos, I shall not have believed in yain.” 


CHAPTER TWO 


After another armed struggle, decided by Montero’s 
victory of Rio Seco, had been added to the tale of civil 
wars, the “honest men,” as Don Jose called them, could 
breathe freely for the first time in half a century. The 
Five- Year-Mandate law became the basis of that re- 
generation, the passionate desire and hope for which had 
been like the elixir of everlasting youth for Don Jose 
Avellanos. 

And when it was suddenly — and not quite unexpect- 
edly — endangered by that “brute Montero,” it was a 
passionate indignation that gave him a new lease of 
life, as it were. Already, at the time of the President- 
Dictator’s visit to Sulaco, Moraga had sounded a note 
of warning from Sta. Marta about the War Minister. 
Montero and his brother made the subject of an earnest 
talk between the Dictator-President and the Nestor- 
inspirer of the party. But Don Vincente, a doctor of 
philosophy from the Cordova University, seemed to 
have an exaggerated respect for military ability, whose 
mysteriousness — since it appeared to be altogether 
independent of intellect — imposed upon his imagina- 
tion. The victor of Rio Seco was a popular hero. His 
services were so recent that the President-Dictator 
quailed before the obvious charge of political ingrati- 
tude. Great regenerating transactions were being 
initiated — ^the fresh loan, a new railway line, a vast 
colonization scheme. Anything that could unsettle 
the public opinion in the capital was to be avoided. 
Don Jose bowed to these arguments and tried to dismiss 


144 


( THE ISABELS 145 

from his mind the gold-laced portent in boots, and with 
a sabre, made meaningless now at last, he hoped, in the 
new order of things. 

Less than six months after the President-Dictator’s 
visit, Sulaco learned with stupefaction of the military 
revolt in the name of national honour. The Minister 
[ of War, in a barrack-square allocution to the officers of 
'I the artillery regiment he had been inspecting, had 
declared the national honour sold to foreigners. The 
Dictator, by his weak compliance with the demands of 
the European powers — for the settlement of long out- 
standing money claims — ^had showed himself unfit to 
rule. A letter from Moraga explained afterwards that 
the initiative, and even the very text, of the incendiary 
allocution came, in reality, from the other Montero, the 
I ex-guerillero, the Commandante de Plaza. The ener- 
getic treatment of Dr. Monygham, sent for in haste “ to 
the mountain,” who came galloping three leagues in the 
dark, saved Don Jose from a dangerous attack of 
jaundice. 

After getting over the shock, Don Jose refused to let 
himself be prostrated. Indeed, better news succeeded 
at first. The revolt in the capital had been suppressed 
after a night of fighting in the streets. Unfortunately, 
both the Monteros had been able to make their escape 
south, to their native province of Entr e-Montes. The 
hero of the forest march, the victor of Rio Seco, had 
been received with frenzied acclamations in Nicoya, the 
provincial capital. The troops in garrison there had 
gone to him in a body. The brothers were organizing 
an army, gathering malcontents, sending emissaries 
primed with patriotic lies to the people, and with 
promises of plunder to the wild llaneros. Even a 
Monterist press had come into existence, speaking 
oracularly of the secret promises of support given by 


146 


NOSTROMO 


“our great sister Republic of the North” against the 
sinister land-grabbing designs of European powers, 
cursing in every issue the “miserable Ribiera,” who 
had plotted to deliver his country, bound hand and foot, 
for a prey to foreign speculators. 

Sulaco, pastoral and sleepy, with its opulent Campo 
and the rich silver mine, heard the din of arms fitfully 
in its fortunate isolation. It was nevertheless in the 
very forefront of the defence with men and' money; but 
the very rumours reached it circuitously — from abroad 
even, so much was it cut off from the rest of the Re- 
public, not only by natural obstacles, but also by the 
vicissitudes of the war. The Monteristos were be- 
sieging Cayta, an important postal link. The over- 
land couriers ceased to come across the mountains, and 
no muleteer would consent to risk the journey at last; 
even Bonifacio on one occasion failed to return from 
Sta. Marta, either not daring to start, or perhaps 
captured by the parties of the enemy raiding the 
country between the Cordillera and the capital. Mon- 
terist publications, however, found their way into the 
province, mysteriously enough; and also Monterist 
emissaries preaching death to aristocrats in the villages 
and towns of the Campo. Very early, at the beginning 
of the trouble, Hernandez, the bandit, had proposed 
(through the agency of an old priest of a village in the 
wilds) to deliver two of them to the Ribierist authori- 
ties in Tonoro. They had come to offer him a free 
pardon and the rank of colonel from General Montero 
in consideration of joining the rebel army with his 
mounted band. No notice was taken at the time of the 
proposal. It was joined, as an evidence of good faith, 
to a petition praying the Sulaco Assembly for per- 
mission to enlist, with all his followers, in the forces 
being then raised in Sulaco for the defence of the Five- 


THE ISABELS 


147 


Year Mandate of regeneration. The petition, like 
everything else, had found its way into Don Jose’s 
hands. He had showed to Mrs. Gould these pages of 
dirty-greyish rough paper (perhaps looted in some 
village store), covered with the crabbed, illiterate hand- 
writing of the old padre, carried off from his hut by the 
side of a mud-walled church to be the secretary of the 
dreaded Salteador. They had both bent in the lamp- 
light of the Gould drawing-room over the document 
containing the fierce and yet humble appeal of the man 
against the blind and stupid barbarity turning an hon- 
est ranchero into a bandit. A postscript of the priest 
stated that, but for being deprived of his liberty for 
ten days, he had been treated with humanity and the 
respect due to his sacred calling. He had been, it ap- 
pears, confessing and absolving the chief and most of 
the band, and he guaranteed the sincerity of their good 
disposition. He had distributed heavy penances, no 
doubt in the way of litanies and fasts; but he argued 
shrewdly that it would be difficult for them to make 
their peace with God durably till they had made peace 
with men. 

Never before, perhaps, had Hernandez’s head been 
in less jeopardy than when he petitioned humbly for 
permission to buy a pardon for himself and his gang of 
deserters by armed service. He could range afar from 
the waste lands protecting his fastness, unchecked, be- 
cause there were no troops left in the whole province. 
The usual garrison of Sulaco had gone south j the 
war, with its brass band playing the Bolivar march on 
the bridge of one of the O.S.N. Company’s steamers. 
The great family coaches drawn up along the shore of the 
harbour were made to rock on the high leathern springs 
by the enthusiasm of the senoras and the senoritas 
standing up to wave their lace handkerchiefs, as lighter 


148 NOSTROMO 

after lighter packed full of troops left the end of the 
jetty. 

Nostromo directed the embarkation, under the super- 
in tendendence of Captain Mitchell, red-faced in the 
sun, conspicuous in a white waistcoat, representing the 
allied and anxious goodwill of all the material interests 
of civilization. General Barrios, who commanded the 
troops, assured Don Jose on parting that in three weeks 
he would have Montero in a wooden cage drawn by 
three pair of oxen ready for a tour through all the towns 
of the Republic. 

‘‘And then, senora,” he continued, baring his curly 
iron-grey head to Mrs. Gould in her landau — “and 
then, senora, we shall convert our swords into plough- 
shares and grow rich. Even I, myself, as soon as this 
little business is settled, shall open a fundacion on some 
land I have on the llanos and try to make a little money 
in peace and quietness. Senora, you know, all Costa- 
guana knows — what do I say.^ — this whole South 
American continent knows, that Pablo Barrios has had 
his fill of military glory.’’ 

Charles Gould was not present at the anxious and 
patriotic send-off. It was not his part to see the soldiers 
embark. It was neither his part, nor his inclination, 
nor his policy. His part, his inclination, and his policy 
were united in one endeavour to keep unchecked the 
flow of treasure he had started single-handed from the 
re-opened scar in the flank of the mountain. As the 
mine developed he had trained for himself some native 
help. “There were foremen, artificers and clerks, with 
Don Pepe for the gobernador of the mining population. 
For the rest his shoulders alone sustained the whole 
weight of the “Imperium in Imperio,” the great Gould 
Concession whose mere shadow had been enough to 
crush the life out of his father. 


THE ISABELS 


149 


Mrs. Gould had no silver mine to look after. In the 
general life of the Gould Concession she was represented 
by her two lieutenants, the doctor and the priest, but 
she fed her woman’s love for excitement on events whose 
significance was purified to her by the fire of her 
imaginative purpose. On that day she had brought the 
Avellanos, father and daughter, down to the harbour 
with her. 

Amongst his other activities of that stirring time, 
Don Jose had become the chairman of a Patriotic Com- 
mittee which had armed a great proportion of troops in 
the Sulaco command with an improved model of a mili- 
tary rifle. It had been just discarded for something 
still more deadly by one of the great European powers. 
How much of the market-price for second-hand weapons 
was covered by the voluntary contributions of the 
principal families, and how much came from those 
funds Don Jose was understood to command abroad, 
remained a se(!ret which he alone could have disclosed; 
but the Ricos, as the populace called them, had con- 
tributed under the pressure of their Nestor’s eloquence. 
Some of the more enthusiastic ladies had been moved to 
bring offerings of jewels into the hands of the man who 
was the life and soul of the party. 

There were moments when both his life and his soul 
seemed overtaxed by so many years of undiscouraged 
belief in regeneration. He appeared almost inanimate, 
sitting rigidly by the side of Mrs. Gould in the landau, 
with his fine, old, clean-shaven face of a uniform tint as 
if modelled in yellow wax, shaded by a soft felt hat, 
the dark eyes looking out fixedly. Antonia, the 
beautiful Antonia, as Miss Avellanos was called in 
Sulaco, leaned back, facing them; and her full figure, the 
grave oval of her face with full red lips, made her look 
more mature than Mrs. Gould, with her mobile ex- 


150 NOSTROMO 

pression and small, erect person under a slightly swaying 
sunshade. 

Whenever possible Antonia attended her father; her 
recognized devotion weakened the shocking effect of her 
scorn for the rigid conventions regulating the life of 
Spanish- American girlhood. And, in truth, she was no 
longer girlish. It was said that she often wrote State 
papers from her father’s dictation, and was allowed to 
read all the books in his library. At the receptions— 
where the situation was saved by the presence of a very 
decrepit old lady (a relation of the Corbelans), quite 
deaf and motionless in an armchair — Antonia could 
hold her own in a discussion with two or three men at a 
time. Obviously she was not the girl to be content 
with peeping through a barred window at a cloaked 
figure of a lover ensconced in a doorway opposite- — 
which is the correct form of Costaguana courtship. It 
was generally believed that with her foreign upbringing 
and foreign ideas the learned and proud Antonia would 
never marry — unless, indeed, she married a foreigner 
from Europe or North America, now that Sulaco seemed 
on the point of being invaded by all the world. 


CHAPTER THREE 


When General Barrios stopped to address Mrs. 
Gould, Antonia raised negligently her hand holding an 
open fan, as if to shade from the sun her head, wrapped 
in a light lace shawl. The clear gleam of her blue eyes 
gliding behind the black fringe of eyelashes paused for a 
moment upon her father, then travelled further to the 
figure of a young man of thirty at most, of medium 
height, rather thick-set, wearing a light overcoat. 
Bearing down with the open palm of his hand upon the 
knob of a fiexible cane, he had been looking on from a 
distance; but directly he saw himself noticed, he ap- 
proached quietly and put his elbow over the door of the 
landau. 

The shirt collar, cut low in the neck, the big bow of 
his cravat, the style of his clothing, from the round hat 
to the varnished shoes, suggested an idea of French 
elegance; but otherwise he was the very type of a fair 
Spanish creole. The fluffy moustache and the short, 
curly, golden beard did not conceal his lips, rosy, fresh, 
almost pouting in expression. His full, round face was 
of that warm, healthy creole white which is never 
tanned by its native sunshine. Martin Decoud was 
seldom exposed to the Costaguana sun under which he 
was born. His people had been long settled in Paris, 
where he had studied law, had dabbled in literature, had 
hoped now and then in moments of exaltation to be- 
come a poet like that other foreigner of Spanish blood, 
Jose Maria Heredia. In other moments he had, to pass 
the time, condescended to write articles on European 
in 


152 


NOSTROMO 


affairs for the Semenario, the principal newspaper in 
Sta. INiarta, which printed them under the heading 
“From our special correspondent,” though the author- 
ship was an open secret. Everybody in Costaguana, 
where the tale of compatriots in Europe is jealously 
kept, knew that it was “the son Decoud,” a talented 
young man, supposed to be moving in the higher 
spheres of Society. As a matter of fact, he was an idle 
boulevardier, in touch with some smart journalists, 
made free of a few newspaper offices, and welcomed in 
the pleasure haunts of pressmen. This life, whose 
dreary superficiality is covered by the glitter of univer- 
sal blague, like the stupid clowning of a harlequin by 
the spangles of a motley costume, induced in him a 
Frenchified — but most un-French — cosmopolitanism, in 
reality a mere barren indifferentism posing as intellec- 
tual superiority. Of his own country he used to say to 
his French associates: — Imagine an atmosphere of 
opera-bouffe in which all the comic business of stage 
statesmen, brigands, etc., etc., all their farcical stealing, 
intriguing, and stabbing is done in dead earnest. It is 
screamingly funny, the blood flows all the time, and 
the actors believe themselves to be influencing the fate 
of the universe. Of course, government in general, any 
government anywhere, is a thing of exquisite comicality 
to a discerning mind; but really we Spanish -Americans 
do overstep the bounds. No man of ordinary intelli- 
gence can take part in the intrigues of une farce macabre. 
However, these Ribierists, of whom we hear so much 
just now, are really trying in their own comical way to 
make the country habitable, and even to pay some of 
its debts. My friends, you had better write up Senor 
Ribiera all you can in kindness to your own bondholders. 
Really, if what I am told in my letters is true, there is 
some chance for them at last,” 


153 


THE ISABELS 

And he would explain with railing verve what Don 
Vincente Ribiera stood for — a mournful little man op- 
pressed by his own good intentions, the significance of 
battles won, who Montero was {un grotesque vaniteux et 
feroce), and the manner of the new loan connected with 
railway development, and the colonization of vast 
tracts of land in one great financial scheme. 

And his French friends would remark that evidently 
this little fellow Decoud connaissait la question a fond. 
An important Parisian review asked him for ah article 
on the situation. It was composed in a serious tone and 
in a spirit of levity. Afterwards he asked one of his 
intimates-^ 

“Have you read my thing about the regeneration of 
Costaguana — une bonne blague, hein?” 

He imagined himself Parisian to the tips of his fingers. 
But far from being that he was in danger of remaining a 
sort of nondescript dilettante all his life. He had 
pushed the habit of universal raillery to a point where it 
blinded him to the genuine impulses of his own nature. 
To be suddenly selected for the executive member of 
the patriotic small-arms committee of Sulaco seemed to 
him the height of the unexpected, one of those fantastic 
moves of which only his “dear countrymen” were 
capable. 

“It’s like a tile falling on my head. I — I — executive 
member! It’s the first I hear of it! What do I know 
of military rifles.^ C^est funambulesque he had ex- 
claimed to his favourite sister; for the Decoud family — 
except the old father and mother — used the French 
language amongst themselves. “And you should see 
the explanatory and confidential letter! Eight pages 
of it — no less!” 

This letter, in Antonia’s handwriting, was signed by 
Don Jose, who appealed to the “young and gifted 


154 


NOSTROMO 


Costaguanero ” on public grounds, and privately opened 
his heart to his talented god-son, a man of wealth and 
leisure, with wide relations, and by his parentage and 
bringing-up worthy of all confidence. 

“Which means,” Martin commented, cynically, to 
his sister, “that I am not likely to misappropriate 
the funds, or go blabbing to our Charge d’Affaires 
here.” 

The whole thing was being carried out behind the 
back of the War Minister, Montero, a mistrusted 
member of the Ribiera Government, but difficult to 
get rid of at once. He was not to know anything of it 
till the troops under Barrios’s command had the new 
rifle in their hands. The President-Dictator, whose 
position was very diflficult, was alone in the secret. 

“How funny!” commented Martin’s sister and con- 
fidant; to which the brother, with an air of best Parisian 
blague, had retorted — 

“It’s immense! The idea of that Chief of the State 
engaged, with the help of private citizens, in digging a 
mine under his own indispensable War Minister. No! 
We are unapproachable!” And he laughed immoder- 
ately. 

Afterwards his sister was surprised at the earnestness 
and ability he displayed in carry in|j| out his mission, 
which circumstances made delicate, and his want of 
special knowledge rendered difficult. She had never 
seen Martin take so much trouble about anything in his 
whole life. 

“It amuses me,” he had explained, briefly. “I am 
beset by a lot of swindlers trying to see all sorts of gas- 
pipe weapons. They are charming; they invite me to 
expensive luncheons; I keep up their hopes; it’s ex- 
tremely entertaining. Meanwhile, the real affair is 
being carried through in quite another quarter.” 


155 


f THE ISABELS 

! 

When the business was concluded he declared sud- 
I denly his intention of seeing the precious consignment 
; delivered safely in Sulaco. The whole burlesque busi- 
j ness, he thought, was worth following up to the end. 

1 He mumbled his excuses, tugging at his golden beard, 
before the acute young lady who (after the first wide 
stare of astonishment) looked at hirri with narrowed 
eyes, and pronounced slowly — 

“I believe you want to see Antonia.” 

“What Antonia?” asked the Costaguana boule- 
vardier, in a vexed and disdainful tone. He shrugged 
his shoulders, and spun round on his heel. His sister 
called out after him joyously — 

“The Antonia you used to know when she wore her 
hair in two plaits down her back.” 

He had known her some eight years since, shortly be- 
fore the Avellanos had left Europe for good, as a tall 
girl of sixteen, youthfully austere, and of a character 
already so formed that she ventured to treat slightingly 
his pose of disabused wisdom. On one occasion, as 
though she had lost all patience, she flew out at him 
about the aimlessness of his life and the levity of his 
opinions. He was twenty then, an only son, spoiled by 
his adoring family. This attack disconcerted him so 
greatly that he had faltered in his affection of amused 
superiority before that insignificant chit of a school-girl. 
But the impression left was so strong that ever since all 
the girl friends of his sisters recalled to him Antonia 
Avellanos by some faint resemblance, or by the great 
force of contrast. It was, he told himself, like a 
ridiculous fatality. And, of course, in the news the 
Decouds received regularly from Costaguana, the 
name of their friends, the Avellanos, cropped up fre- 
quently — the arrest and the abominable treatment of 
the ex-Minister, the dangers and hardships endured by 


156 


NOSTROMO 


the family, its withdrawal in poverty to Sulaco, the 
death of the mother. * 

The Monterist pronunciamento had taken place be- 
fore Martin Decoud reached Costaguana. He came 
out in a roundabout way, through Magellan’s Straits by 
the main line and the West Coast Service of the O.S.N. 
Company. His' precious consignment arrived just in 
time to convert the first feelings of consternation into a 
mood of hope and resolution. Publicly he was made 
much of by the familias principales. Privately Don 
Jose, still shaken and weak, embraced him with tears 
in his eyes. 

“You have come out yourself! No less could be ex- 
pected from a Decoud. Alas ! our worst fears have been 
realized,” he moaned, affectionately. And again he 
hugged his god-son. This was indeed the time for men 
of intellect and conscience to rally round the endangered 
cause. 

It was then that Martin Decoud, the adopted child of 
Western Europe, felt the absolute change of atmos- 
phere. He submitted to being embraced and talked to 
without a word. He was moved in spite of himself by 
that note of passion and sorrow unknown on the more 
refined stage of European politics. But when the tall 
Antonia, advancing with her light step in the dimness 
of the big bare Sala of the Avellanos house, offered him 
her hand (in her emancipated way), and murmured, “I 
am glad to see you here, Don Martin,” he felt how ini- 
possible it would be to tell these two people that he had 
intended to go away by the next month’s packet. Don 
Jose, meantime, continued his praises. Every acces- 
sion added to public confidence, and, besides, what an 
example to the young men at home from the brilliant 
defender of the country’s regeneration, the worthy ex- 
pounder of the party’s political faith before the world! 


THE ISABELS 157 

Everybody had read the magnificent article in the 
famous Parisian Review. The world was now in- 
formed: and the author’s appearance at this moment 
was like a public act of faith. Young Decoud felt over- 
come by a feeling of impatient confusion. His plan had 
been to return by way of the United States through 
California, visit Yellowstone Park, see Chicago, 
Niagara, have a look at Canada, perhaps make a short 
stay in New York, a longer one in Newport, use his 
letters of introduction. The pressure of Antonia’s hand 
was so frank, the tone of her voice was so unexpectedly 
unchanged in its approving warmth, that all he found to 
say after his low bow was — 

“I am inexpressibly grateful for your welcome; but 
why need a man be thanked for returning to his native 
country.^ I am sure Dona Antonia does not think so.” 

“Certainly not, senor,” she said, with that perfectly 
calm openness of manner which characterized all her 
utterances. “But when he returns, as you return, one 
may be glad — for the sake of both.” 

Martin Decoud said nothing of his plans. He not 
only never breathed a word of them to any one, but only 
a fortnight later asked the mistress of the Casa Gould 
(where he had of course obtained admission at once), 
leaning forward in his chair with an air of well-bred 
familiarity, whether she could not detect in him that 
day a marked change — an air, he explained, of more 
excellent gravity. At this Mrs. Gould turned her face 
full towards him with the silent inquiry of slightly 
widened eyes and the merest ghost of a smile, an 
habitual movement with her, which was very fascinat- 
ing toymen by something subtly devoted, finely self- 
forgetful in its lively readiness of attention. Because, 
Decoud continued imperturbably, he felf^no longer 
an idle cumberer of the earth. She was, he assured 


158 


NOSTROMO 


her, actually beholding at that moment the Journalist 
of Sulaco. At once Mrs. Gould glanced towards An- 
tonia, posed upright in the corner of a high, straight- 
backed Spanish sofa, a large black fan waving slowly 
against the curves of her fine figure, the tips of crossed 
feet peeping from under the hem of the black skirt. 
Decoud’s eyes also remained fixed there, while in an 
undertone he added that Miss Avellanos was quite 
aware of his new and unexpected vocation, which in 
Costaguana was generally the speciality of half- 
educated negroes and wholly penniless lawyers. Then, 
confronting with a sort of urbane effrontery Mrs. 
Gould’s gaze, now turned sympathetically upon him- 
self, he breathed out the words, “Pro Patria!” 

What had happened was that he had all at once 
yielded to Don Jose’s pressing entreaties to take the 
direction of a newspaper that would “voice the aspira- 
tions of the province.” It had been Don Jose’s old and 
cherished idea. The necessary plant (on a modest 
scale) and a large consignment of paper had been re- 
ceived from America some time before; the right man 
alone was wanted. Even Sefior Moraga in Sta. Marta 
had not been abie to find one, and the matter was now 
becoming pressing; some organ was absolutely needed 
to counteract the effect of the lies disseminated by the 
Monterist press: the atrocious calumnies, the appeals 
of the people calling upon them to rise with their knives 
in their hands and put an end once for all to the Blancos, 
to these Gothic remnants, to these sinister mummies, 
these impotent paraliticos, who plotted with foreigners 
for the surrender of the lands and the slavery of the 
people. 

The clamour of this Negro Liberalism frightened 
Sen or Avellanos. A newspaper was the only remedy. 
And now that the right man had been found in Decoud, 


THE ISABELS 


159 


great black letters appeared painted between the win- 
dows above the arcaded ground floor of a house on the 
Plaza. It was next to Anzani’s great emporium of 
boots, silks, ironware, muslins, wooden toys, tiny silver 
arms, legs, heads, hearts (for ex-voto offerings), rosaries, 
champagne, women’s hats, patent medicines, even a few 
dusty books in paper covers and mostly in the French 
language. The . big black letters formed the words, 
“Offices of the Porvenir,^^ From these offices a single 
folded sheet of Martin’s journalism issued three times a 
week; and the sleek yellow Anzani prowling in a suit of 
ample black and carpet slippers, before the many doors 
of his establishment, greeted by a deep, side-long incli- 
nation of his body the Journalist of Sulaco going to and 
fro on the business of his august calling. 


CHAPTER FOUR 


Perhaps it was in the exercise of his calling that he 
had come to see the troops depart. The Porvenir of the 
day after next would no doubt relate the event, but its 
editor, leaning his side against the landau, seemed to 
look at nothing. The front rank of the company of 
infantry drawn up three deep across ttie shore end of the 
jetty when pressed too close would bring their bayonets 
to the charge ferociously, with an awful rattle; and then 
the crowd of spectators swayed back bodily, even under 
the noses of the big white mules. i Notwithstanding the 
great multitude there was only a low, muttering noise; 
the dust hung iJ a brown haze, in which the horsemen, 
wedged in the throng here and there, towered from the 
hips upwards, gazing all one way over the heads. Al- 
most every one of them had mounted a friend, who 
steadied himself with both hands grasping his shoulders 
from behind; and the rims of their hats touching, made 
like one disc sustaining the cones of two pointed crowns 
with a double face underneath. A hoarse mozo would 
bawl out something to an acquaintance in the ranks, or 
a woman would shriek suddenly the word Adios ! 
followed by the Christian name of a man. 

General Barrios, in a shabby blue tunic and white 
peg-top trousers falling upon strange red boots, kept his 
head uncovered and stooped slightly, propping himself 
up with a thick stick. No! He had earned enough 
military glory to satiate any man, he insisted to Mrs. 
Gould, trying at the same time to put an. air of gallantry 
into his attitude. A few jetty hairs hung sparsely from 
160 


THE ISABELS 


161 


his upper lip, he had a salient nose, a thin, long jaw, and 
! a black silk patch over one eye. His other eye, small 
and deep-set, twinkled erratically in all directions, 
aimlessly affable. The few European spectators, all 
men, who had naturally drifted into the neighbourhood 
of the Gould carriage, betrayed by the solemnity of their 
faces their impression that the general must have had too 
much punch (Swedish punch, imported in bottles by 
Anzani) at the Amarilla Club before he had started with 
his Staff on a furious ride to the harbour. But Mrs. 
Gould bent forward, self-possessed, and declared her 
conviction that still niore glory awaited the general in 
the near future. 

“Senora!” he remonstrated, with great feeling, “in 
the name of God, reflect! How can there be any glory 
for a man like me in overcoming that bald-headed 
embustero with the dyed moustaches.?” 

Pablo Ignacio Barrios, son of a villag , alcade, general 
of division, commanding in chief the Occidental Mili- 
tary district, did not frequent the higher society of the 
town. He preferred the unceremonious gatherings of 
men where he could tell jaguar-hunt stories, boast of 
his powers with the lasso, with which he could perform 
exl^remely difficult feats of the sort “no married man 
should attempt,” as the saying goes amongst the 
llaneros; relate tales of extraordinary night rides, en- 
counters with wild bulls, struggles with crocodile, 
adventures in the great forests, crossings of swollen 
rivers. And it was not mere boastfulness that prompted 
the general’s reminiscences, but a genuine love of that 
wild life which he had led in his young days before he 
turned his back for ever on the thatched roof of the 
parental tolderia in the woods. Wandering away as 
far as Mexico he had fought against the French by the 
side (as he said) of Juarez, and was the only military 


162 


NOSTROMO 


man of Costaguana who had ever encountered European 
troops in the field. That fact shed a great lustre upon 
his name till it became eclipsed by the rising star of 
Montero. All his life he had been an inveterate gam- 
bler. He alluded himself quite openly to the current 
story how once, during some campaign (when in com- 
mand of a brigade), he had gambled away his horses, 
pistols, and accoutrements, to the very epaulettes, 
playing monte with his colonels the night before the 
battle. Finally, he had sent under escort his sword 
(a presentation sword, with a gold hilt) to the town in 
the rear of his position to be immediately pledged for 
five hundred pesetas with a sleepy and frightened 
shop-keeper. By daybreak he had lost the last of that 
money, too, when his only remark, as he rose calmly, 
was, “Now let us go and fight to the death.” From 
that time he had become aware that a general could 
lead his troops into battle very well with a simple stick 
in his hand. “It has been my custom ever since,” he 
would say. 

He was always overwhelmed with debts; even during 
the periods of splendour in his varied fortunes of a 
Costaguana general, when he held high military com- 
mands, his gold-laced uniforms were almost always in 
pawn with some tradesman. And at last, to avoid the 
incessant difficulties of costume caused by the anxious 
lenders, he had assumed a disdain of military trappings, 
an eccentric fashion of shabby old tunics, which had 
become like a second nature. But the faction Barrios 
joined needed to fear no political betrayal. He was 
too much of a real soldier for the ignoble traflfic of buy- 
ing and selling victories. A member of the foreign 
diplomatic body in Sta. Marta had once passed a 
judgment upon him: “Barrios is a man of perfect 
honesty and even of some talent for war, mais il manque 


THE ISABELS 


163 


de tenue. After the triumph of the Ribierists he had 
obtained the reputedly lucrative Occidental command, 
mainly through the exertions of his creditors (the Sta. 
Marta shopkeepers, all great politicians), who moved 
heaven and earth in his interest publicly, and privately 
besieged Senor Moraga, the influential agent of the 
San Tome mine, with the exaggerated lamentations 
that if the general were passed over, “We shall all be 
ruined.” An incidental but favourable mention of his 
name in Mr. Gould senior’s long correspondence with 
his son had something to do with his appointment, too; 
but most of all undoubtedly his established political 
honesty. No one questioned the personal bravery of 
the Tiger-Filler, as the populace called him. He was, 
however, said to be unlucky in the field — but this was 
to be the beginning of an era of peace. The soldiers 
liked him for his humane temper, which was like a 
strange and precious flower unexpectedly blooming on 
the hotbed of corrupt revolutions; and when he rode 
slowly through the streets during some military display, 
the contemptuous good hurnour of his solitary eye roam- 
ing over the crowds extorted the acclamations of the 
populace. The women of that class especially seemed 
positively fascinated by the long dropping nose, the 
peaked chin, the heavy lower lip, the black silk eye- 
patch and band slanting rakishly over the forehead. 
His high rank always procured an audience of Ca- 
balleros for his sporting stories, which he detailed very 
well with a simple, grave enjoyment. As to the society 
of ladies, it was irksome by the restraints it imposed 
without any equivalent, as far as he could see. He had 
not, perhaps, spoken three times on the whole to Mrs. 
Gould since he had taken up his high command; but he 
had observed her frequently riding with the Senor 
Administrador, and had pronounced that there was 


164 


NOSTROMO 


more sense in her little bridle-hand than in all the fe- 
male headsdn Sulaco. His impulse had been to be very 
civil on parting to a woman who did not wobble in the 
saddle, and happened to be the wife of a personality 
very important to a man always short of money. He 
even pushed his attentions so far as to desire the aide-de- 
camp at his side (a thick-set, short captain with a Tar- 
tar physiognomy) to bring along a corporal with a file of 
men in front of the carriage, lest the crowd in its back- 
ward surges should “incommode the mules of the 
senora.” Then, turning to the small knot of silent 
Europeans looking on within earshot, he raised his 
voice protectingly — 

“Senores, have no apprehension. Go ^on quietly 
making your Ferro Carril — your railways, your tele- 
graphs. Your There’s enough wealth in Costa- 

guana to pay for everything — or else you would not be 
here. Ha! ha! 'Don’t mind this little picardia of my 
friend Montero. In a little while you shall behold his 
dyed moustaches through the bars of a strong wooden 
cage. Si, senores! Fear nqthing, develop the country, 
work, work!” 

The little group of engineers received this exhortation 
without a word, and after waving his hand at them 
loftily, he addressed himself again to Mrs. Gould — 

“That is what Don Jose says we must do. Be enter- 
prising! Work! Grow rich! To put Montero in a 
cage is my work; and when that insignificant piece of 
business is done, then, as Don Jose wishes us, we shall 
grow rich, one and all, like so many Englishmen, be- 
cause it is money that saves a country, and ” 

But a young officer in a very new uniform, hurrying 
up from the direction of the jetty, interrupted his 
interpretation of Senor Avellanos’s ideals. The general 
made a movement of impatience; the other went on 


THE ISABELS 


165 


talking to him insistently, with an air of respect. The 
horses of the Staff had been embarked, the steamer’s 
gig was awaiting the general at the boat steps; and 
Barrios, after a fierce stare of his one eye, began to take 
leave. Don Jose roused himself for an appropriate 
phrase pronounced mechanically. The terrible strain 
of hope and fear was telling on him, and he seemed to 
husband the last sparks of his fire for those oratorical 
efforts of which even the distant Europe was to hear. 
Antonia, her red lips firmly closed, averted her head 
behind the raised fan; and young Decoud, though he 
felt the girl’s eyes upon him, gazed away persistently, 
hooked on his elbow, with a scornful and complete de- 
tachment. Mrs. Gould heroically concealed her dis- 
may at the appearance of men and events so remote 
from her racial conventions, dismay too deep to be 
uttered in words even to her husband. She understood 
his voiceless reserve better now. Their confidential 
intercourse fell, not in moments of privacy, but pre- 
cisely in public, when the quick meeting of their glances 
would comment upon some fresh turn of events. She 
had gone to his school of uncompromising silence, the 
only one possible, since so much that seemed shocking, 
weird, and grotesque in the working out of their pur- 
poses had to be accepted as normal in this country. 
Decidedly, the stately Antonia looked more mature and 
infinitely calm; but she would never have known how 
to reconcile the sudden sinkings of her heart with an 
amiable mobility of expression. 

Mrs. Gould smiled a good-bye at Barrios, nodded 
round to the Europeans (who raised their hats si- 
multaneously) with an engaging invitation, “ I hope to 
see you all presently, at home”; then said nervously to 
Decoud, “Get in, Don Martin,” and heard him mutter 
to himself in French, as he opened the carriage door. 


166 


NOSTROMO 


“ie sort en est jete.’^ She heard him with a sort of 
exasperation. Nobody ought to have known better 
than himself that the first cast of dice had been already 
thrown long ago in a most desperate game. Distant 
acclamations, words of command yelled out, and a roll 
of drums on the jetty greeted the departing general. 
Something like a slight faintness came over her, and she 
looked blankly at Antonia’s still face, wondering what 
would happen to Charley if that absurd man failed. 

A la casa, Ignacio’* she cried at the motionless broad 
back of the coachman, who gathered the reins without 
haste, mumbling to himself under his breadth, 
la casa. Si, si nina.” 

The carriage rolled noiselessly on the soft track, the 
shadows fell long on the dusty little plain interspersed 
with dark bushes, mounds of turned-up earth, low 
wooden buildings with iron roofs of the Railway 
Company; the sparse row of telegraph poles strode 
obliquely clear of the town, bearing a single, almost in- 
visible wire far into the great campo — like a slender, 
vibrating feeler of that progress waiting outside for a 
moment of peace to enter and twine itself about the 
weary heart of the land. 

The cafe window of the Albergo d’ltalia Una was full 
of sunburnt, whiskered faces of railway men. But at 
the other end of the house, the end of the Signori 
Inglesi, old Giorgio, at the door with one of his girls on 
each side, bared his bushy head, as white as the snows of 
Higuerota. Mrs. Gould stopped the carriage. She 
seldom failed to speak to her protSge; moreover, the 
excitement, the heat, and the dust had made her 
thirsty. She asked for a glass of water. Giorgio sent 
the children indoors for it, and approached with pleasure 
expressed in his whole rugged countenance. It was not 
often that he had occasion to see his benefactress, 


THE ISABELS 


167 


who was also an Englishwoman — another title to his 
regard. He offered some excuses for his wife. It 
was a bad day with her; her oppressions — he tapped his 
own broad chest. She could not move from her chair 
that day. 

Decoud, ensconced in the corner of his seat, observed 
gloomily Mrs. Gould’s old revolutionist, then, offhand — 

“Well, and what do you think of it all, Garibaldino.?” 

Old Giorgio, looking at him with some curiosity, said 
civilly that the troops had marched very well. One- 
eyed Barrios and his officers had done wonders with the 
recruits in a short time. Those Indios, only caught the 
other day, had gone swinging past in double quick time, 
like bersaglieri; they looked well fed, too, and had whole 
uniforms. “Uniforms!” he repeated with a half -smile 
of pity. A look of grim retrospect stole over his pierc- 
ing, steady eyes. It had been otherwise in his time 
when men fought against tyranny, in the forests of 
Brazil, or on the plains of Uruguay, starving on half- 
raw beef without salt, half naked, with often only a 
knife tied to a stick for a weapon. “And yet we 
used to prevail against the oppressor,” he concluded, 
proudly. 

His animation fell; the slight gesture of his hand 
expressed discouragement; but he added that he had 
asked one of the sergeants to show him the new rifle. 
There was no such weapon in his fighting days; and if 
Barrios could not — 

“Yes, yes,” broke in Don Jose, almost trembling 
with eagerness. “ We are safe. The good Senor Viola 
is a man of experience. Extremely deadly — is it not 
so? You have accomplished your mission admirably, 
my dear Martin.” 

Decoud, lolling back moodily, contemplated old 

Viola. 


168 


NOSTROMO 


“Ah! Yes. A man of experience. But who are 
you for, really, in your heart.^” 

Mrs. Gould leaned over to the children. Linda had 
brought out a glass of water on a tray, with extreme 
care; Giselle presented her with a bunch of flowers 
gathered hastily. 

“For the people,” declared old Viola, sternly. 

“We are all for the people — in the end.” 

“Yes,” muttered old Viola, savagely. “And mean- 
time they fight for you. Blind. Esclavos!” 

At that moment young Scarfe of the railway staff 
emerged from the door of the part reserved for the 
Signori Inglesi. He had come down to headquarters 
from somewhere up the line on a light engine, and had 
had just time to get a bath and change his clothes. He 
was a nice boy, and Mrs. Gould welcomed him. 

“It’s a delightful surprise to see you, Mrs. Gould. 
I’ve just come down. Usual luck. Missed everything, 
of course. This show is just over, and I hear there has 
been a great dance at Don Juste Lopez’s last night. Is 
it true?” 

“The young patricians,” Decoud began suddenly in 
his precise English, “have indeed been dancing before 
they started off to the war with the Great Pompey.” 

Young Scarfe stared, astounded. “You haven’t 
met before,” Mrs. Gould intervened. “Mr. Decoud — 
Mr. Scarfe.” 

“Ah! But we are not going to Pharsalia,” pro- 
tested Don Jose, with nervous haste, also in English. 
“You should not jest like this, Martin.” 

Antonia’s breast rose and fell with a deeper breath. 
The young engineer was utterly in the dark. “Great 
what?” he muttered, vaguely. 

“Luckily, Montero is not a Caesar,” Decoud con- 
tinued. “Not the two Monteros put together would 


THE ISABELS 


169 


make a decent parody of a Cjesar.” He crossed his 
arms on his breast, looking at Senor Avellanos, who 
had returned to his immobility. “It is only you, Don 
Jose, who are a genuine old Roman — vir Romanus — 
eloquent and inflexible.” 

Since he had heard the name of Montero pronounced, 
yuung Scarf e had been eager to express his simple feel- 
ings. In a loud and youthful tone he hoped that this 
Montero was going to be licked once for all and done 
with. There was no saying what would happen to the 
railway if the revolution got the upper hand. Perhaps 
it would have to be abandoned. It would not be the 
first railway gone to pot in Costaguana. “You know, 
it’s one of their so-called national things,” he ran on, 
wrinkling up his nose as if the world had a suspicious 
flavour to his profound experience of South American 
affairs. And, of course, he chatted with animation, it 
had been such an immense piece of luck for him at his 
age to get appointed on the staff “of a big thing like 
that — don’t you know.” It would give him the pull 
over a lot of chaps all through life, he asserted. “ There- 
fore — down with Montero! Mrs. Gould.” His artless 
grin disappeared slowly before the unanimous gravity 
of the faces turned upon him from the carriage; only 
that “old chap,” Don Jose, presenting a motionless, 
waxy profile, stared straight on as if deaf. Scarf e did 
not know the Avellanos very well. They did not give 
balls, and Antonia never appeared at a ground-floor 
window, as some other young ladies used to do at- 
tended by elder women, to chat with the Caballeros on 
horseback in the Calle. The stares of these creoles did 
not matter much; but what on earth had come to Mrs. 
Gould.?^ She said, “Go on, Ignacio,” and gave him a 
slow inclination of the head. He heard a short laugh 
from that round-faced, Frenchified fellow. He coloured 


170 


NOSTROMO 


up to the eyes, and stared at Giorgio Viola, who had 
fallen back with the children, hat in hand. 

“I shall want a horse presently,” he said with some 
asperity to the old man. 

“Si, senor. There are plenty of horses,” murmured 
the Garibaldino, smoothing absently, with his brown 
hands, the two heads, one dark with bronze glints, the 
other fair with a coppery ripple, of the two girls by his 
side. The returning stream of sightseers raised a 
great dust on the road. Horsemen noticed the group. 
“Go to your mother,” he said. “They are growing up 
as I am growing older, and there is nobody ” 

He looked at the young engineer and stopped, as if 
awakened from a dream; then, folding his arms on his 
breast, took up his usual position, leaning back in the 
doorway with an upward glance fastened on the white 
shoulder of Higuerota far away. 

In the carriage Martin Decoud, shifting his position 
as though he could not make himself comfortable, mut- 
tered as he swayed towards Antonia, “I suppose you 
hate me.” Then in a loud voice he began to con- 
gratulate Don Jose upon all the engineers being con- 
vinced Ribierists. The interests of all those foreigners 
was gratifying. “You have heard this one. He is an 
enlightened well-wisher. It is pleasant to think that 
the prosperity of Costaguana is of some use to the 
world.” 

“He is very young,” Mrs. Gould remarked, quietly. 

“And so very wise for his age,” retorted Decoud. 
“ But here we have the naked truth from the mouth of 
that child. You are right, Don Jose. The natural 
treasures of Costaguana are of importance to the pro- 
gressive Europe represented by this youth, just as three 
hundred years ago the wealth of our Spanish fathers 
was a serious object Jo the rest of Europe — as repre- 


THE ISABELS 


171 


sented by the bold buccaneers. There is a curse of 
futility upon our character: Don Quixote and Sancho 
Panza, chivalry and materialism, high-sounding senti- 
ments and a supine morality, violent efforts for an idea 
and a sullen acquiescence in every form of corruption. 
We convulsed a continent for our independence only to 
become the passive prey of a democratic parody, the 
helpless victims of scoundrels and cut-throats, our 
institutions a mockery, our laws a farce — a Guzman 
Bento our master! And we have sunk so low that when 
a man like you has awakened our conscience, a stupid 
barbarian of a Montero — Great Heavens! a Montero! — 
becomes a deadly danger, and an ignorant, boastful 
Indio, like Barrios, is our defender.” 

But Don Jose, disregarding the general indictment as 
though he had not heard a word of it, took up the de- 
fence of Barrios. The man was competent enough for 
his special task in the plan of campaign. It consisted 
in an offensive movement, with Cayta as base, upon the 
flank of the Revolutionist forces advancing from the 
south against Sta. Marta, which was covered by another 
army with the President-Dictator in its midst. Don 
Jose became quite animated with a great flow of speech, 
bending forward anxiously under the steady eyes of his 
daughter. Decoud, as if silenced by so much ardour, 
did not make a sound. The bells of the city were strik- 
ing the hour of Oracion when the carriage rolled under 
the old gateway facing the harbour like a shapeless 
monument of leaves and stones. The rumble of wheels 
under the sonorous arch was traversed by a strange, 
piercing shriek, and Decoud, from his back seat, had a 
view of the people behind the carriage trudging along 
the road outside, all turning their heads, in sombreros 
and rebozos, to look at a locomotive which rolled 
quickly out of sight behind Giorgio Viola’s house, under 


172 


NOSTROMO 


a white trail of steam that seemed to vanish in the 
breathless, hysterically prolonged scream of warlike 
triumph. And it was all like a fleeting vision, the 
shrieking ghost of a railway engine fleeing across the 
frame of the archway, behind the startled movement 
of the people streaming back from a military spectacle 
with silent footsteps on the dust of the road. It was a 
material train returning from the Campo to the pali- 
saded yards. The empty cars rolled lightly on the 
single track; there was no rumble of wheels, no tremor 
on the ground. The engine-driver, running past the 
Casa Viola with the salute of an uplifted arm, checked 
his speed smartly before entering the yard; and when 
the ear-splitting screech of the steam-whistle for the 
brakes had stopped, a series of hard, battering shocks, 
mingled with the clanking of chain-couplings, made a 
tumult of blows and shaken fetters under the vault of 
the gate. 


CHAPTER FIVE 


The Gould carriage was the first to return from the 
harbour to the empty town. On the ancient pavement, 
laid out in patterns, sunk into ruts and holes, the portly 
Ignacio, mindful of the springs of the Parisian-built 
I landau, had pulled up to a walk, and Decoud in his 
corner contemplated moodily the inner aspect of the 
gate. The squat turreted sides held up between them 
a mass of masonry with bunches of grass growing at the 
top, and a grey, heavily scrolled, armorial shield of stone 
above the apex of the arch with the arms of Spain nearly 
smoothed out as if in readiness for some new device 
typical of the impending progress. 

The explosive noise of the railway trucks seemed to 
augment Decoud’s irritation. He muttered something 
to himself, then began to talk aloud in curt, angry 
phrases thrown at the silence of the two women. They 
did not look at him at all; while Don Jose, with his semi- 
translucent, waxy complexion, overshadowed by the 
soft grey hat, swayed a little to the jolts of the carriage 
by the side of Mrs. Gould. 

“This sound puts a new edge on a very old 
truth.” 

Decoud spoke in French, perhaps because of Ignacio 
on the box above him; the old coachman, with his broad 
back filling a short, silver-braided jacket, had a big 
pair of ears, whose thick rims stood well away from his 
cropped head. 

“Yes, the noise outside the city wall is new, but the 
principle is old.” 


m 


174 


NOSTROMO 


He ruminated his discontent for a while, then began 
afresh with a sidelong glance at Antonia — 

“No, but just imagine our forefathers in morions and 
corselets drawn up outside this gate, and a band of 
adventurers just landed from their ships in the harbour 
there. Thieves, of course. Speculators, too. Their 
expeditions, each one, were the speculations of grave 
and reverend persons in England. That is history, as 
that absurd sailor Mitchell is always saying.’’ 

“Mitchell’s arrangements for the embarkation of the 
troops were excellent!” exclaimed Don Jose. 

“That! — that! oh, that’s really the work of that 
Genoese seaman! But to return to my noises; there 
used to be in the old days the sound of trumpets outside 
.that gate. War trumpets! I’m sure they were trum- 
pets. I have read somewhere that Drake, who was 
the greatest of these men, used to dine alone in his 
cabin on board ship to the sound of trumpets. In 
those days this town was full of wealth. Those men 
came to take it. Now the whole land is like a treasure- 
house, and all these people are breaking into it, whilst 
we are cutting each other’s throats. The only thing 
that keeps them out is mutual jealousy. But they’ll 
come to an agreement some day — and by the time we’ve 
settled our quarrels and become decent and honourable, 
there’ll be nothing left for us. It has always been the 
same. We are a wonderful people, but it has always 
been our fate to be” — he did not say “robbed,” but 
added, after a pause — “exploited!” 

Mrs. Gould said, “Oh, this is unjust!” And Antonia 
interjected, “Don’t answer him, Emilia. He is at- 
tacking me.” 

“You surely do not think I was attacking Don Car- 
los!” Decoud answered. 

And then the carriage stopped before the door of the 


THE ISABELS 175 

Casa Gould. The young man offered his hand to the 
ladies. They went in first together; Don Jose walked 
by the side of Decoud, and the gouty old porter tottered 
after them with some light wraps on his arm. 

Don Jose slipped his hand under the arm of the 
journalist of Sulaco. 

“The Porvenir must have a long and confident article 
upon Barrios and the irresistibleness of his army of 
Cayta! The moral effect should be kept up in the 
country. We must cable encouraging extracts to 
Europe and the United States to maintain a favour- 
able impression abroad.” 

Decoud muttered, “Oh, yes, we must comfort our 
friends, the speculators.” ‘ 

The long open gallery was in shadow, with its screen 
of plants in vases along the balustrade, holding out 
motionless blossoms, and all the glass doors of the 
reception-rooms thrown open. A jingle of spurs died 
out at the further end. 

Basilio, standing aside against the wall, said in a soft 
tone to the passing ladies, “The Sen or Administrador is 
just back from the mountain.” 

In the great sala, with its groups of ancient Spanish 
and modern European furniture making as if different 
centres under the high white spread of the ceiling, the 
silver and porcelain of the tea-service gleamed among 
a cluster of dwarf chairs, like a bit of a lady’s 
boudoir, putting in a note of feminine and intimate 
delicacy. 

Don Jose in his rocking-chair placed his hat on his 
lap, and Decoud walked up and down the whole length 
of the room,' passing between tables loaded with knick- 
knacks and almost disappearing behind the high backs 
of leathern sofas. He was thinking of the angry face of 
Antonia; he was confident that he would make his 


176 NOSTROMO 

peace with her. He had not stayed in Sulaco to quarrel 
with Antonia. 

Martin Decoud was angry with himself. All he saw 
and heard going on around him exasperated the pre- 
conceived views of his European civilization. To 
contemplate revolutions from the distance of the 
Parisian Boulevards was quite another matter. Here 
on the spot it was not possible to dismiss their tragic 
comedy with the expression, Quelle farce 

The reality of the political action, such as it was, 
seemed closer, and acquired poignancy by Antonia’s 
belief in the cause. Its crudeness hurt his feelings. He 
was surprised at his own sensitiveness. 

“I suppose I am more of a Costaguanero than I would 
have believed possible,” he thought to himself. 

His disdain grew like a reaction of his scepticism 
against the action into which he was forced by his 
infatuation for Antonia. He soothed himself by saying 
he was not a patriot, but a lover. 

The ladies came in bareheaded, and Mrs. Gould sank 
low before the little tea-table. Antonia took up her 
usual place at the reception hour — the corner of a 
leathern couch, with a rigid grace in her pose and a fan 
in her hand. Decoud, swerving from the straight line of 
his march, came to lean over the high back of her seat. 

For a long time he talked into her ear from behind, 
softly, with a half smile and an air of apologetic famili- 
arity. Her fan lay half grasped on her knees. She 
never looked at him. His rapid utterance grew more 
and more insistent and caressing. At last he ventured 
a slight laugh. 

“No, really. You must forgive me. One must be 
serious sometimes.” He paused. She turned her 
head a little; her blue eyes glided slowly towards him, 
slightly upwards, mollified and questioning. 


177 


I 

; THE ISABELS 

^ ‘‘You can’t think I am serious when I call Montero a 
; gran' hestia every second day in the Porvenir f That 
is not a serious occupation. No occupation is serious, 
not even when a bullet through the heart is the penalty 
i of failure!” 

j Her hand closed firmly on her fan. 

“Some reason, you understand, I mean some sense, 
may creep into thinking; some glimpse of truth. I 
mean some effective truth, for which there is no room 
in politics or journalism. I happen to have said what 
I thought. And you are angry! If you do me the 
kindness to think a little you will see that I spoke like a 
patriot.” 

She opened her red lips for the first time, not un- 
kindly. 

“Yes, but you never see the aim. Men must be used 
as they are. I suppose nobody is really disinterested, 
unless, perhaps, you, Don Martin.” 

“ God forbid ! It’s the last thing I should like you to 
believe of me.” He spoke lightly, and paused. 

She began to fan herself with a slow movement with- 
! out raising her hand. After a time he whispered pas- 
1 sionately — 

“Antonia!” 

' She smiled, and extended her hand after the English 
manner towards Charles Gould, who was bowing before 
her; while Decoud, with his elbows spread on the back 
of the sofa, dropped his eyes and murmured, BonjourP 

The Senor Administrador of the San Tome mine bent 
over his wife for a moment. They exchanged a few 
words, of which only the phrase, “ The greatest enthu- 
siasm,” pronounced by Mrs. Gould, could be heard. 

“Yes,” Decoud began in a murmur. “Even he!” 

“This is sheer calumny,” said Antonia, not very 
severely. 


178 


NOSTROMO 


“You just ask him to throw his mine into the melting- 
pot for the great cause/’ Decoud whispered. 

Don Jose had raised his voice. He rubbed his hands 
cheerily. The excellent aspect of the troops and the 
great quantity of new deadly rifles on the shoulders of 
those brave men seemed to fill him with an ecstatic 
confidence. 

Charles Gould, very tall and thin before his chair, 
listened, but nothing could be discovered in his face 
except a kind and deferential attention. 

Meantime, Antonia had risen, and, crossing the 
room, stood looking out of one of the three long windows 
giving on the street. Decoud followed her. The 
window was thrown open, and he leaned against the 
thickness of the wall. The long folds of the damask 
curtain, falling straight from the broad brass cornice, 
hid him partly from the room. He folded his arms on 
his breast, and looked steadily at Antonia’s profile. 

The people returning from the harbour filled the 
pavements; the shuffle of sandals and a low murmur of 
voices ascended to the window. Now and then a coach 
rolled slowly along the disjointed roadway of the Calle 
de la Constitucion. There were not many private 
carriages in Sulaco; at the most crowded hour on the 
Alameda they could be counted with one glance of the 
eye. The great family arks swayed on high leathern 
springs, full of pretty powdered faces in which the eyes 
looked intensely alive and black. And first Don Juste 
Lopez, the President of the Provincial Assembly, 
passed with his three lovely daughters, solemn in a 
black frock-coat and stiff white tie, as when directing a 
debate from a high tribune. Though they all raised 
their eyes, Antonia did not make the usual greeting 
gesture of a fluttered hand, and they affected not to see 
the two young people, Costaguaneros with European 


THE ISABELS 


179 


l 


manners, whose eccentricities were discussed behind the 
barred windows of the first families in Sulaco. And 
then the widowed Senora Gavilaso de Valdes rolled by, 
handsome and dignified, in a great machine in which 
she used to travel to and from her country house, sur- 
rounded by an armed retinue in leather suits and big 
sombreros, with carbines at the bows of their saddles. 
She was a woman of most distinguished family, proud, 
rich, and kind-hearted. Her second son, Jaime, had 
just gone off on the Staff of Barrios. The eldest, a 
worthless fellow of a moody disposition, filled Sulaco 
with the noise of his dissipations, and gambled heavily 
at the club. The two youngest boys, with yellow Ri- 
bierist cockades in their caps, sat on the front seat. 
She, too, affected not to see the Senor Decoud talking 
publicly with Antonia in defiance of every convention. 
And he not even her novio as far as the world knew! 
Though, even in that case, it would have been scandal 
enough. But the dignified old lady, respected and 
admired by the first families, would have been still 
more shocked if she could have heard the words they 
were exchanging. 

“Did you say I lost sight of the aim? I have only 
one aim in the world.” 

She made an almost imperceptible negative move- 
ment of her head, still staring across the street at the 
Avellanos’s house, grey, marked with decay, and with 
iron bars like a prison. 

“And it would be so easy of attainment,” he con- 
tinued, “this aim which, whether knowingly or not, I 
have always had in my heart — ever since the day when 
you snubbed me so horribly once in Paris, you re- 
member.” 

A slight smile seemed to move the corner of the lip 
that was on his side. 


180 


NOSTROMO 


‘‘You know you were a very terrible person, a sort of 
Charlotte Corday in a schoolgirl’s dress; a ferocious 
patriot. I suppose you would have stuck a knife into 
Guzman Bento.^” 

She interrupted him. “You do me too much 
honour.” 

“At any rate,” he said, changing suddenly to a tone of 
bitter levity, “you would have sent me to stab him 
without compunction.” 

“Ah, par exemple ! ” she murmured in a shocked tone. 

“Well,” he argued, mockingly, “you do keep me here 
writing deadly nonsense. Deadly to me! It has al- 
ready killed my self-respect. And you may imagine,” 
he continued, his tone passing into light banter, “that 
Montero, should he be successful, would get even with 
me in the only way such a brute can get even with a 
man of intelligence who condescends to call him a gran' 
hestia three times a week. It’s a sort of intellectual 
death; but there is the other one in the background for 
a journalist of my ability.” 

“If he is successful!” said Antonia, thoughtfully. 

“You seem satisfied to see my life hang on a thread,” 
Decoud replied, with a broad smile. “And the other 
Montero, the ‘ my trusted brother’ of the proclamations, 
the guerrillero — haven’t I written that he was taking 
the guests’ overcoats and changing plates in Paris at 
our Legation in the intervals of spying on our refugees 
there, in the time of Rojas.^ He will wash out that 
sacred truth in blood. In my blood! Why do you 
look annoyed? This is simply a bit of the biography of 
one of our great men. What do you think he will do to 
me? There is a certain convent wall round the corner 
of the Plaza, opposite the door of the Bull Ring. You 
know? Opposite the door with the inscription, Tntrada 
de la Sombra.’ Appropriate, perhaps! That’s where 


THE ISABELS 


181 


the uncle of our host gave up his Anglo-South-Ameri- 
can soul. And, note, he might have run away. A man 
who has fought with w^eapons may run away. You 
might have let me go with Barrios if you had cared for 
me. I would have carried one of those rifles, in which 
Don Jose believes, with the greatest satisfaction, in the 
ranks of poor peons and Indios, that know nothing 
either of reason or politics. The most forlorn hope in 
the most forlorn army on earth would have been safer 
than that for which you made me stay here. When you 
make war you may retreat, but not when you spend 
your time in inciting poor ignorant fools to kill and to 
die.” 

His tone remained light, and as if unaware of his 
presence she stood motionless, her hands clasped 
lightly, the fan hanging down from her interlaced 
fingers. He waited for a while, and then — 

“I shall go to the wall,” he said, with a sort of jocular 
desperation. 

Even that declaration did not make her look at him. 
Her head remained still, her eyes fixed upon the house 
of the Avellanos, whose chipped pilasters, broken 
cornices, the whole degradation of dignity was hidden 
now by the gathering dusk of the street. In her whole 
figure her lips alone moved, forming the words — 

“Martin, you will make me cry.” 

He remained silent for a minute, startled, as if over- 
whelmed by a sort of awed happiness, with the lines of 
the mocking smile still stiffened about his mouth, and 
incredulous surprise in his eyes. The value of a sen- 
tence is in the personality which utters it, for nothing 
new can be said by man or woman; and those were the 
last words, it seemed to him, that could ever have been 
spoken by Antonia. He had never made it up with 
her so completely in all their intercourse of small en- 


182 


NOSTROMO 


counters; but even before she had time to turn towards 
him, which she did slowly with a rigid grace, he had 
begun to plead — 

“My sister is only waiting to embrace you. My 
father is transported with joy. I won’t say anything 
of my mother! Our mothers were like sisters. There 
is the mail-boat for the south next week — ^let us go. 
That Moraga is a fool! A man like Montero is 
bribed. It’s the practice of the country. It’s tradi- 
tion — it’s politics. Read ‘Fifty Years of Misrule.’” 

“Leave poor papa alone, Don Martin. He be- 
lieves ” 

“I have the greatest tenderness for your father,” 
he began, hurriedly. “But I love you, Antonia! And 
Moraga has miserably mismanaged this business. Per- 
haps your father did, too; I don’t know. Montero was 
bribeable. Why, I suppose he only wanted his share of 
this famous loan for national development. Why 
didn’t the stupid Sta. Marta people give him a mission 
to Europe, or something.^ He would have taken five 
years’ salary in advance, and gone on loafing in Paris, 
this stupid, ferocious Indio!” 

“The man,” she said, thoughtfully, and very calm 
before this outburst, “was intoxicated with vanity. 
We had all the information, not from Moraga only; 
from others, too. There was his brother intriguing, 
too.” 

“Oh, yes!” he said. “Of course you know. You 
know everything. You read all the correspondence, 
you write all the papers — all those State papers 
that are inspired here, in this room, in blind deference 
to a theory of political purity. Hadn’t you Charles 
Gould before your eyes.^^ Rey de Sulaco! He and 
his mine are the practical demonstration of what 
could have been done. Do you think he succeeded 


THE ISABELS 


183 


by his fidelity to a theory of virtue? And all those 
railway people, with their honest work! Of course, 
their work is honest! But what if you cannot work 
honestly till the thieves are satisfied? Could he not, 
a gentleman, have told this Sir John what’s-his-name 
that Montero had to be bought off — he and all his 
Negro Liberals hanging on to his gold-laced sleeve? 
He ought to have been bought off with his own stupid 
weight of gold — his weight of gold, I tell you, boots, 
sabre, spurs, cocked hat, and all.” 

She shook her head slightly. “It was impossible,” 
she murmured. 

“He wanted the whole lot? What?” 

She was facing him now in the deep recess of the 
window, very close and motionless. Her lips moved 
rapidly. Decoud, leaning his back against the wall, 
listened with crossed arms and lowered eyelids. He 
drank the tones of her even voice, and watched the 
agitated life of her throat, as if waves of emotion had 
run from her heart to pass out into the air in her 
reasonable words. He also had his aspirations, he 
aspired to carry her away out of these deadly futilities 
of pronunciamientos and reforms. All this was wrong 
— utterly wrong; but she fascinated him, and some- 
times the sheer sagacity of a phrase would break the 
charm, replace the fascination by a sudden unwilling 
thrill of interest. Some women hovered, as it were, on 
the threshold of genius, he reflected. They did not 
want to know, or think, or understand. Passion stood 
for all that, and he was ready to believe that some start- 
lingly profound remark, some appreciation of character, 
or a judgment upon an event, bordered on the miracu- 
lous. In the mature Antonia he could see with an 
extraordinary vividness the austere schoolgirl of the 
earlier days. She seduced his attention; sometimes he 


184 


NOSTROMO 


could not restrain a murmur of assent; now and then he 
advanced an objection quite seriously. Gradually they 
began to argue; the curtain half hid them from the 
people in the sala. 

Outside it had grown dark. From the deep trench of 
shadow between the houses, lit up vaguely by the 
glimmer of street lamps, ascended the evening silence 
of Sulaco; the silence of a town with few carriages, of 
unshod horses, and a softly sandalled population. The 
windows of the Casa Gould flung their shining parallelo- 
grams upon the house of the Avellanos. Now and then 
a shuflBe of feet passed below with the pulsating red 
glow of a cigarette at the foot of the walls; and the 
night air, as if cooled by the snows of Higuerota, re- 
freshed their faces. 

‘‘We Occidentals,” said Martin Decoud, using the 
usual term the provincials of Sulaco applied to theiur 
selves, “have been always distinct and separated. As 
long as we hold Cayta nothing can reach us. In all our 
troubles no army has marched over those mountains. 
A revolution in the central provinces isolates us at once. 
Look how complete it is now! The news of Barrios’ 
movement will be cabled to the United States, and only 
in that way will it reach Sta. Marta by the cable from 
the other seaboard. We have the greatest riches, the 
greatest fertility, the purest blood in our great fam- 
ilies, the most laborious population. The Occidental 
Province should stand alone. The early Federalism 
was not bad for us. Then came this union which 
Don Henrique Gould resisted. It opened the road to 
tyranny; and, ever since, the rest of Costaguana hangs 
like a millstone round our necks. The Occidental 
territory is large enough to make any man’s country. 
Look at the mountainsJ Nature itself seems to cry 
to us ‘Separate’’” 


■ THE ISABELS 185 

i She made an energetic gesture of negation. A 
> silence fell. 

Oh, yes, I know it’s contrary to the doctrine laid 
down in the ‘History of Fifty Years’ Misrule.’ I am 
only trying to be sensible. But my sense seems always 
to give you cause for offence. Have I startled you very 
much with this perfectly reasonable aspiration.^^” 

She shook her head. No, she was not startled, but 
the idea shocked her early convictions. Her patriotism 
was larger. She had never considered that possibility. 

“ It may yet be the means of saving some of your con- 
victions,” he said, prophetically. 

She did not answer. She seemed tired. They 
leaned side by side on the rail of the little balcony, very 
friendly, having exhausted politics, giving themselves 
up to the silent feeling of their nearness, in one of those 
profound pauses that fall upon the rhythm of passion. 
Towards the plaza end of the street the glowing coals 
in the brazeros of the market women cooking their 
evening meal gleamed red along the edge of the pave- 
ment. A man appeared without a sound in the light 
of a street lamp, showing the coloured inverted triangle 
of his bordered poncho, square on his shoulders, hang- 
ing to a point below his knees. From the harbour end 
of the Calle a horseman walked his soft-stepping mount, 
gleaming silver-grey abreast each lamp under the dark 
shape of the rider. 

“Behold the illustrious Capataz de Cargadores,” 
said Decoud, gently, “coming in all his splendour after 
his work is done. The next great man of Sulaco after 
Don Carlos Gould. But he is good-natured, and let 
me make friends with him.” 

“Ah, indeed!” said Antonia. “How did you make 
friends 

“A journalist ought to have his finger on the popular 


186 


NOSTROMO 


pulse, and this man is one of the leaders of the populace. 
A journalist ought to know remarkable men — and this 
man is remarkable in his way.” 

‘‘Ah, yes!” said Antonia, thoughtfully. “It is 
known that this Italian has a great influence.” 

The horseman had passed below them, with a gleam 
of dim light on the shining broad quarters of the grey 
mare, on a bright heavy stirrup, on a long silver spur; 
but the short flick of yellowish flame in the dusk was 
powerless against the muffled-up mysteriousness of the 
dark flgure with an invisible face concealed by a great 
sombrero^ 

Decoud and Antonia remained leaning over the 
balcony, side by side, touching elbows, with their heads 
overhanging the darkness of the street, and the bril- 
liantly lighted sala at their backs. This was a tete-d-tete 
of extreme impropriety; something of which in the 
whole extent of the Republic only the extraordinary 
Antonia could be capable — the poor, motherless girl, 
never accompanied, with a careless father, who had 
thought only of making her learned. Even Decoud 
himself seemed to feel that this was as much as he could 
expect of having her to himself till — till the revolution 
was over and he could carry her off to Europe, away 
from the endlessness of civil strife, whose folly seemed 
even harder to bear than its ignominy. After one 
Montero there would be another, the lawlessness of a 
populace of all colours and races, barbarism, irre- 
mediable tyranny. As the great Liberator Bolivar had 
said in the bitterness of his spirit, “America is un- 
governable. Those who worked for her independence 
have ploughed the sea.” He did not care, he declared 
boldly; he seized every opportunity to tell her that 
though she had managed to make a Blanco journalist 
of him, he was no patriot. First of all, the word had 


THE ISABELS 


187 


no sense for cultured minds, to whom the narrowness of 
every belief is odious; and secondly, in connection with 
the everlasting troubles of this unhappy country it was 
hopelessly besmirched; it had been the cry of dark 
barbarism, the cloak of lawlessness, of crimes, of ra- 
pacity, of simple thieving. 

He was surprised at the warmth of his own utterance. 
He had no need to drop his voice; it had been low all 
the time, a mere murmur in the silence of dark houses 
with their shutters closed early against the night air, 
as is the custom of Sulaco. Only the sala of the Casa 
Gould flung out defiantly the blaze of its four windows, 
the bright appeal of light in the whole dumb obscurity 
of the street. And the murmur on the little balcony 
went on after a short pause. 

“But we are labouring to change all that,” Antonia 
protested. “It is exactly what we desire. It is our 
object. It is the great cause. And the word you 
despise has stood also for sacrifice, for courage, for 
constancy, for suffering. Papa, who ” 

“Ploughing the sea,” interrupted Decoud, looking 
down. 

There was below the sound of hasty and ponderous 
footsteps. 

“Your uncle, the grand- vicar of the cathedral, has 
just turned under the gate,” observed Decoud. “He 
said Mass for the troops in the Plaza this morning. 
They had built for him an altar of drums, you know. 
And they brought outside all the painted blocks to take 
the air. All the wooden saints stood militarily in a row 
at the top of the great flight of steps. They looked 
like a gorgeous escort attending the Vicar-General. I 
saw the great function from the windows of the P or- 
venir. He is amazing, your uncle, the last of the 
Corbelans. He glittered exceedingly in his vestments 


188 


NOSTROMO 


with a great crimson velvet cross down his back. And 
all the time our saviour Barrios sat in the Amarilla 
Club drinking punch at an open window. Esprit fort — 
our Barrios. I expected every moment your uncle to 
launch an excommunication there and then at the black 
eye-patch in the window across the Plaza. But not 
at all. Ultimately the troops marched off. Later 
Barrios came down with some of the officers, and stood 
with his uniform all unbuttoned, discoursing at the 
edge of the pavement. Suddenly your uncle appeared, 
no longer glittering, but all black, at the cathedral door 
with that threatening aspect he has — ^you know, like a 
sort of avenging spirit. He gives one look, strides over 
straight at the group of uniforms, and leads away the 
general by the elbow. He walked him for a quarter of 
an hour in the shade of a wall. Never let go his elbow U 
for a moment, talking all the time with exaltation, and 
gesticulating with a long black arm. It was a curious 
scene. The officers seemed struck with astonishment. 
Remarkable man, your missionary uncle. He hates an 
infidel much less than a heretic, and prefers a heathen 
many times to an infidel. He condescends graciously 
to call me a heathen, sometimes, you know.” 

Antonia listened with her hands over the balustrade, 
opening and shutting the fan gently ; and Decoud talked 
a little nervously, as if afraid that she would leave him 
at the first pause. Their cpmparative isolation, the 
precious sense of intimacy, the slight contact of their 
arms, affected him softly; for now and then a tender 
inflection crept into the flow of his ironic murmurs^ 

“Any slight sign of favour from a relative of yours is 
welcome, Antonia. And perhaps he understands me, 
after all! But I know him, too, our Padre Corbelan. 
The idea of political honour, justice, and honesty for 
him consists in the restitution of the confiscated Church 


189 


' THE ISABELS 

j property. Nothing else could have drawn that fierce 
.1 converter of savage Indians out of the wilds to work for 
I the Ribierist cause! Nothing else but that wild hope! 
f: He would make a pronunciamiento himself for such an 
object against any Government if he could only get 
followers! What does Don Carlos Gould think of 
that? But, of course, with his English impenetrability, 
nobody can tell what he thinks. Probably he thinks of 
nothing apart from his mine; of his Tmperium in 
Imperio.’ As to Mrs. Gould, she thinks of her schools, of 
her hospitals, of the mothers with the young babies, of 
every sick old man in the three villages. If you were to 
turn your head now you would see her extracting a re- 
port from that sinister doctor in a check shirt — what’s 
his name? Monygham — or else catechising Don Pepe 
or perhaps listening to Padre Roman. They are all 
down here to-day — all her ministers of state. Well, 
she is a sensible woman, and perhaps Don Carlos is a 
sensible man. It’s a part of solid English sense not to 
think too much; to see only what may be of practical 
use at the moment. These people are not like ourselves. 
We have no political reason; we have political passions 
— sometimes. What is a conviction? A particular view 
of our personal advantage either practical or emotional. 
No one is a patriot for nothing. The word serves us 
well. But I am clear-sighted, and I shall not use that 
word to you, Antonia! I have no patriotic illusions. I 
have only the supreme illusion of a lover.” 

He paused, then muttered almost inaudibly, “That 
can lead one very far, though.” 

Behind their backs the political tide that once in 
every twenty -four hours set with a strong flood through 
the Gould drawing-room could be heard, rising higher 
in a hum of voices. Men had been dropping in singly, 
or in twos and threes : the higher officials of the province, 


190 


NOSTROMO 


engineers of the railway, sunburnt and in tweeds, with 
the frosted head of their chief smiling with slow, humor- 
ous indulgence amongst the young eager faces. Scarf e, 
the lover of fandangos, had already slipped out in search 
of some dance, no matter where, on the outskirts of the 
town. Don Juste Lopez, after taking his daughters 
home, had entered solemnly, in a black creased coat 
buttoned up under his spreading brown beard. The 
few members of the Provincial Assembly present 
clustered at once around their President to discuss the 
news of the war and the last proclamation of the rebel 
Montero, the miserable Montero, calling in the name of 
“a justly incensed democracy” upon all the Provincial 
Assemblies of the Republic to suspend their sittings till 
his sword had made peace and the will of the people 
could be consulted. It was practically an invitation to 
dissolve: an unheard-of audacity of that evil madman. 

The indignation ran high in the knot of deputies be- 
hind Jose Avellanos. Don Jose, lifting up his voice, 
cried out to them over the high back of his chair, 
“Sulaco has answered by sending to-day an army upon 
his flank. If all the other provinces show only half as 
much patriotism as we. Occidentals ” 

A great outburst of acclamations covered the vibrat- 
ing treble of the life and soul of the party. Yes ! Yes ! 
This was true ! A great truth ! Sulaco was in the fore- 
front, as ever! It was a boastful tumult, the hopeful- 
ness inspired by the event of the day breaking out 
amongst those Caballeros of the Campo thinking of their 
herds, of their lands, of the safety of their families. 
Everything was at stake. . . . No! It was im- 

possible that Montero should succeed! This criminal, 
this shameless Indio ! The clamour continued for some 
time, everybody else in the room looking towards the 
group where Don Juste had put on his air of impartial 


THE ISABELS 


191 


solemnity as if presiding at a sitting of the Provincial 
Assembly. Decoud had turned round at the noise, 
and, leaning his back on the balustrade, shouted into 
the room with all the strength of his lungs, ‘'Gran" 
hestia !” 

This unexpected cry had the effect of stilling the 
noise. All the eyes were directed to the window with 
an approving expectation; but Decoud had already 
turned his back upon the room, and was again leaning 
out over the quiet street. 

“This is the quintessence of my journalism; that is 
the supreme argument,” he said to Antonia. “I have 
invented this definition, this last word on a great 
question. But I am no patriot. I am no more of a 
p^riot than the Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores, this 
Genoese who has done such great things for this harbour 
— this active usher-in of the material implements for our 
progress. You have heard Captain Mitchell confess 
over and over again that till he got this man he could 
never tell how long it would take to unload a ship. 
That is bad for progress. You have seen him pass by 
after his labours on his famous horse to dazzle the girls 
in some ballroom with an earthen floor. He is a 
fortunate fellow! His work is an exercise of personal 
powers; his leisure is spent in receiving the marks of 
extraordinary adulation. And he likes it, too. Can 
anybody be more fortunate? To be feared and ad- 
mired is ” 

‘And are these your highest aspirations, Don 
Martin?” interrupted Antonia. 

“I was speaking of a man of that sort,” said Decoud, 
curtly. “The heroes of the world have been feared and 
admired. What more could he want?” 

Decoud had often felt his familiar habit of ironic- 
thought fall shattered against Antonia’s gravity. She 


192 


NOSTROMO 


irritated him as if she, too, had suffered from that in- 
explicable feminine obtuseness which stands so often 
between a man and a woman of the more ordinary sort. 
But he overcame his vexation at once. He was very 
far from thinking Antonia ordinary, whatever verdict 
his scepticism might have pronounced upon himself. 
With a touch of penetrating tenderness in his voice he 
assured her that his only aspiration was to a felicity so 
high that it seemed almost unrealizable on this earth. 

She coloured invisibly, with a warmth against which 
the breeze from the sierra seemed to have lost its cooling 
power in the sudden melting of the snows. His whisper 
could not have carried so far, though there was enough 
ardour in his tone to melt a heart of ice. Antonia 
turned away abruptly, as if to carry his whispered 
assurance into the room behind, full of light, noisy with 
voices. 

The tide of political speculation was beating high 
within the four walls of the great sala, as if driven 
beyond the marks by a great gust of hope. Don Juste’s 
fan-shaped beard was still the centre of loud and 
animated discussions. There was a self-confident ring 
in all the voices. Even the few Europeans around 
Charles Gould — a Dane, a couple of Frenchmen, a dis- 
creet fat German, smiling, with down-cast eyes, the 
representatives of those material interests that had got 
a footing in Sulaco under the protecting might of the 
San Tome mine — had infused a lot of good humour into 
their deference. Charles Gould, to whom they were 
paying their court, was the visible sign of the stability 
that could be achieved on the shifting ground of revolu- 
tions. They felt hopeful about their various under- 
takings. One of the two Frenchmen, small, black, with 
glittering eyes lost in an immense growth of bushy 
beard, waved his tiny brown hands and delicate wrists. 


THE ISABELS 


193 


I He had been travelling in the interior of the province 
for a syndicate of European capitalists. His forcible 
f '"Monsieur V Administrateur'' returning every minute 
shrilled above the steady hum of conversations. He 
i| was relating his discoveries. He was ecstatic. Charles 
I Gould glanced down at him courteously. 

I At a given moment of these necessary receptions it 
was Mrs. Gould’s habit to withdraw quietly into a 
little drawing-room, especially her own, next to the 
f great sala. She had risen, and, waiting for Antonia, 
listened with a slightly worried graciousness to the 
engineer-in-chief of the railway, who stooped over her, 
relating slowly, without the slightest gesture, some- 
thing apparently amusing, for his eyes had a humorous 
twinkle. Antonia, before she advanced into the room 
to join Mrs. Gould, turned her head over her shoulder 
towards Decoud, only for a moment. 

“Why should any one' of us think his aspirations 
unrealizable.?” she said, rapidly. 

“I am going to cling to mine to the end, Antonia,” 
he answered, through clenched teeth, then bowed very 
low, a little distantly. 

The engineer-in-chief had not finished telling his 
amusing story. The humours of railway building in 
South America appealed to his keen appreciation of the 
absurd, and he told his instances of ignorant prejudice 
and as ignorant cunning very well. Now, Mrs. Gould 
gave him all her attention as he walked by her side 
escorting the ladies out of the room. Finally all three 
passed unnoticed through the glass doors in the gallery. 
Only a tall priest stalking silently in the noise of the sala 
checked himself to look after them. Father Corbelan, 
whom Decoud had seen from the balcony turning into 
the gateway of the Casa Gould, had addressed no one 
since coming in. The long, skimpy soutane accentu-* 


194 


NOSTROMO 


ated the tallness of his stature; he carried his power- 
ful torso thrown forward; and the straight, black bar of 
his joined eyebrows, the pugnacious outline of the bony 
face, the white spot of a scar on the bluish shaven 
cheeks (a testimonial to his apostolic zeal from a party 
of unconverted Indians), suggested something unlawful 
behind his priesthood, the idea of a’ chaplain of bandits. 

He separated his bony, knotted hands clasped behind 
his back, to shake his finger at Martin. 

Decoud had stepped into the room after Antonia. 
But he did not go far. He had remained just within, 
against the curtain, with an expression of not quite 
genuine gravity, like a grown-up person taking part in a 
game of children. He gazed quietly at the threatening 
finger. 

“I have watched your reverence converting General 
Barrios by a special sermon on the Plaza,’’ he said, with- 
out making the slightest movement. 

“What miserable nonsense!” Father Corbelan’s 
deep voice resounded all over the room, making all the 
heads turn on the shoulders. “The man is a drunkard. 
Senores, the God of your General is a bottle!” 

His contemptuous, arbitrary voice caused an uneasy 
suspension of every sound, as if the self-confidence of 
the gathering had been staggered by a blow. But 
nobody took up Father Corbelan’s declaration. 

It was known that Father Corbelan had come out of 
Hie \^ilds to advocate the sacred rights of the Church 
with the same fanatical fearlessness with which he had 
gone preaching to bloodthirsty savages, devoid of hu- 
man compassion or worship of any kind. Rumours of 
legendary proportions told of his successes as a mission- 
ary beyond the eye of Christian men. He had baptized 
whole nations of Indians, living with them like a savage 
himself. It was related that the padre used to ride with 


THE ISABELS 


195 


i his Indians for days, half naked, carrying a bullock-hide 
shield, and, no doubt, a long lance, too — who knows? 
That he had wandered clothed in skins, seeking for 
proselytes somewhere near the snow line of the Cor- 
, dillera. Of these exploits Padre Corbelan himself was 
never known to talk. But he made no secret of his 
opinion that the politicians of Sta. Marta had harder 
hearts and more corrupt minds than the heathen to 
whom he had carried the word of God. His injudicious 
zeal for the temporal welfare of the Church was damag- 
ing the Ribierist cause. It was common knowledge 
that he had refused to be made titular bishop of the 
Occidental diocese till justice was done to a despoiled 
Church. The political Gefe of Sulaco (the same 
dignitary whom Captain Mitchell saved from the 
mob afterwards) hinted with naive cynicism that 
doubtless their Excellencies the Ministers sent the padre 
over the mountains to Sulaco in the worst season of the 
year in the hope that he would be frozen to death by 
the icy blasts of the high paramos. Every year a few 
hardy muleteers — men inured to exposure — were known 
to perish in that way. But what would you have? 
Their Excellencies possibly had not realized what a 
tough priest Jie was. Meantime, the ignorant were 
beginning to murmur that the Ribierist reforms meant 
simply the taking away of the land from the people. 
Some of it was to be given to foreigners who made the ^ 
railway; the greater part was to go to the padres. 

These were the results of the Grand Vicar’s zeal. 
Even from the short allocution to the troops on the 
Plaza (which only the first ranks could have heard) he 
had not been able to keep out his fixed idea of an 
outraged Church waiting for reparation from a penitent 
country. The political Gefe had been exasperated. 
But he could not very v/ell throw the brother-in-law 


196 


NOSTROMO 


of Don Jose into the prison of the Cabildo. The chief 
magistrate, an easy-going and popular official, visited 
the Casa Gould, walking over after sunset from the 
Intendencia, unattended, acknowledging with dignified 
courtesy the salutations of high and low alike. That 
evening he had walked up straight to Charles Gould 
and had hissed out to him that he would have liked to 
deport the Grand Vicar out of Sulaco, anywhere, to 
some desert island, to the Isabels, for instance. “ The 
one without water preferably — eh, Don Carlos? ” he had 
added in a tone between jest and earnest. This un- 
controllable priest, who had rejected his offer of the 
Episcopal palace for a residence and preferred to hang 
his shabby hammock amongst the rubble and spiders 
of the sequestrated Dominican Convent, had taken into 
his head to advocate an unconditional pardon for Her- 
nandez the Robber! And this was not enough; he 
seemed to have entered into communication with the 
most audacious criminal the country had known for 
years. The Sulaco police knew, of course, what was 
going on. Padre Corbelan had got hold of that reckless 
Italian, the Capataz de Cargadores, the only man fit 
for such an errand, and had sent a message through him. 
Father Corbelan had studied in Rome, and could 
speak Italian. The Capataz was known to visit the 
old Dominican Convent at night. • An old woman who 
served the Grand Vicar had heard the name of Her- 
nandez pronounced; and only last Saturday afternoon 
the Capataz had been observed galloping out of town. 
He did not return for two days. The police would have 
laid the Italian by the heels if it had not been for fear of 
the Cargadores, a turbulent body of men, quite apt to 
raise a tumult. Nowadays it was not so easy to govern 
Sulaco. Bad characters flocked into it, attracted by the 
money in the pockets of the railway workmen. The 


THE ISABELS 


197 


f populace was made restless by Father Corbelan’s dis- 
courses. And the first magistrate explained to Charles 
I Gould that now the province was stripped of troops any 
outbreak of lawlessness would find the authorities with 
their boots off, as it were. 

Then he went away moodily to sit in an armchair, 

■ smoking a long, thin cigar, not very far from Don 
I Jose, with whom, bending over sideways, he exchanged 
a few words from time to time. He ignored the en- 
trance of the priest, and whenever Father Corbelan’s 
voice was raised behind him, he shrugged his shoulders 
impatiently. 

Father Corbelan had remained quite motionless for a 
time with that something vengeful in his immobility 
which seemed to characterize all his attitudes. A lurid 
glow of strong convictions gave its peculiar aspect to the 
black figure. But its fierceness became softened as the 
padre, fixing his eyes upon Decoud, raised his long, 
black arm slowly, impressively — 

“And you — you are a perfect heathen,” he said, in a 
subdued, deep voice. 

He made a step nearer, pointing a forefinger at the 
young man’s breast. Decoud, very calm, felt the wall 
behind the curtain with the back of his head. Then, 
with his chin tilted well up, he smiled. 

“Very well,” he agreed with the slightly weary non- 
chalance of a man well used to these passages. “But 
is it perhaps that you have not discovered yet what is 
the God of my worship? It was an easier task with our 
Barrios.” 

The priest suppressed a gesture of discouragement. 
“You believe neither in stick nor stone,” he said. 

“Nor bottle,” added Decoud without stirring. 
“Neither does the other of your reverence’s confidants. 
I mean the Capataz of the Cargadores. He does not 


198 


NOSTROMO 


drink. Your reading of my character does honour to 
youfperspicacity. But why call me a heathen.^” 

“True,” retorted the priest. “You are ten times 
worse. A miracle could not convert you.” 

“I certainly do not believe in miracles,” said Decoud, 
quietly. Father Corbelan shrugged his high, broad 
shoulders doubtfully. 

“A sort of Frenchman — godless — a materialist,” 
he pronounced slowly, as if weighing the terms of a 
careful analysis. “Neither the son of his own country 
nor of any other,” he continued, thoughtfully. 

“Scarcely human, in fact,” Decoud commented under 
his breath, his head at rest against the wall, his eyes 
gazing up at the ceiling. 

“The victim of this faithless age,” Father Corbelan 
resumed in a deep but subdued voice. 

“But of some use as a journalist.” Decoud changed 
his pose and spoke in a more animated tone. “Has 
your worship neglected to read the last number of the 
Porvenir ? I assure you it is just like the others. On 
the general policy it continues to call Montero a gran' 
hestia, and stigmatize his brother, the guerrillero, for a 
combination of lacquey and spy. What could be more ■ 
effective.^ In local affairs it urges the Provincial 
Government to enlist bodily into the national army the 
band of Hernandez the Robber — who is apparently 
the 'protege of the Church — or at least of the Great 
Vicar. Nothing could be more sound.” 

The priest nodded and turned on the heels of his 
square-toed shoes with big steel buckles. Again, with 
his hands clasped behind his back, he paced to and fro, 
planting his feet firmly. When he swung about, the 
skirt of his soutane was inflated slightly by the brusque- 
ness of his movements. 

The great sala had been emptying itself slowly. 


THE ISABELS 


199 


’i When the Gefe Politico rose to go, most of those still 
I remaining stood up suddenly in sign of respect, and Don 
i Jose Avellanos stopped the rocking of his chair. But 
the good-natured First OflScial made a deprecatory ges- 
i ture, waved his hand to Charles Gould, and went out 
f discreetly. 

In the comparative peace of the room the screaming 

Monsieur V Administrateur^^ of the frail, hairy French- 
I man seemed to acquire a preternatural shrillness. The 
explorer of the Capitalist syndicate was still enthusias- 
■ tic. “ Ten million dollars’ worth of copper practically in 
I Monsieur V Administrateur. Ten millions in sight! 

And a railway coming — a railway! They will never 
^believe my report. C"est trop beau.’" He fell a prey to 
a screaming ecstasy, in the midst of sagely nodding 
heads, before Charles Gould’s imperturbable calm. 

And only the priest continued his pacing, flinging 
round the skirt of his Soutane at each end of his beat. 
Decoud murmured to him ironically: “ Those gentlemen 
talk about their gods.” 

Father Corbelan stopped short, looked at the jour- 
nalist of Sulaco fixedly for a moment, shrugged his 
shoulders slightly, and resumed his plodding walk of an 
obstinate traveller. 

And now the Europeans were dropping off from the 
group around Charles Gould till the Administrador of 
the Great Silver Mine could be seen in his whole lank 
length, from head to foot, left stranded by the ebbing 
tide of his guests on the great square of carpet, as it 
were a multi-coloured shoal of flowers and arabesques 
under his brown boots. Father Corbelan approached 
the rocking-chair of Don Jose Avellanos. 

“Come, brother,” he said, with kindly brusqueness 
and a touch of relieved impatience a man may feel at the 
end of a perfectly useless ceremony. A la Casa ! A 


200 


NOSTROMO 


la Casa I This has been all talk. Let us now go and 
think and pray for guidance from Heaven.” 

He rolled his black eyes upwards. By the side of the 
frail diplomatist — the life and soul of the party — he 
seemed gigantic, with a gleam of fanaticism in the 
glance. But the voice of the party, or, rather, its 
mouthpiece, the “son Decoud” from Paris, turned 
journalist for the sake of Antonia’s eyes, knew very well 
that it was not so, that he was only a strenuous priest 
with one idea, feared by the women and execrated by 
the men of the people. Martin Decoud, the dilettante 
in life, imagined himself to derive an artistic pleasure 
from watching the picturesque extrenie of wrong- 
headedness into which an honest, almost sacred, con- 
viction may drive a man. “It is like madness. It 
must be — because it’s self -destructive,” Decoud had 
said to himself often. It seemed to him that every 
conviction, as soon as it became effective, turned into i 
I that form of dementia the gods send upon those they j 
wish to destroy. But he enjoyed the bitter flavour of | 
that example with the zest of a connoisseur in the art J 
of his choice. Those two men got on well together, as ' 
if each had felt respectively that a masterful con- 
viction, as well as utter scepticism, may lead a man 
very far on the by-paths of political action. 

Don Jose obeyed the touch of the big hairy hand. 
Decoud followed out the brothers-in-law. And there 
remained only one visitor in the vast empty sala, 
bluishly hazy with tobacco smoke, a heavy-eyed, round- 
cheeked man, with a drooping moustache, a hide mer- 
chant from Esmeralda, who had come overland to 
Sulaco, riding with a few peons across the coast range. 
He was very full of his journey, undertaken mostly for 
the purpose of seeing the Senor Administrador of San 
Tome in relation to some assistance he required in his 


THE ISABELS 


201 


[ hide-exporting business. He hoped to enlarge it greatly 
' now that the country was going to be settled. It was 
going to be settled, he repeated several times, degrad - 
! ing by a strange, anxious whine the sonority of the 

I ' Spanish language, which he pattered rapidly, like some 
sort of cringing jargoi A plain man could carry on his 
little business now in the country, and even think of 
enlarging it— with safety. Was it not so? He seemed 
to beg Charles Gould for a confirmatory word, a grunt 
il of assent, a simple nod even. 

He could get nothing. His alarm increased, and in 
the pauses he would dart his eyes here and there; then, 
loth to give up, he would branch off into feeling allusion 
to the dangers of his journey. The audacious Her- 
nandez, leaving his usual haunts, had crossed the 
Campo of Sulaco, and was known to be lurking in the 
ravines of the coast range. Yesterday, when distant 
only a few hours from Sulaco, the hide merchant and his 
servants had seen three men on the road arrested sus- 
piciously, with their horses’ heads together. Two of 
these rode off at once and disappeared in a shallow 
quebrada to the left. “We stopped,” continued the 
man from Esmeralda, “and I tried to hide behind a 
small bush. But none of my mozos would go forward 
to find out what it meant, and the third horseman 
seemed to be waiting for us to come up. It was no use. 
We had been seen. So we rode slowly on, trembling. 
He let us p^ss — a man on a grey horse with his hat down 
on his eyes — without a word of greeting; but by-and-by 
we heard him galloping after us. We faced about, but 
that did not seem to intimidate him. He rode up at 
speed, and touching my foot with the toe of his boot, 
asked me for a cigar, with a blood-curdling laugh. He 
did not seem armed, but when he put his hand back to 
reach for the matches I saw an enormous revolver 


W2 


NOSTROMO 


strapped to his waist. I shuddered. He had very 
fierce whiskers, Don Carlos, and as he did not offer to go ' 
on we dared not move. At last, blowing the smoke ^ 
of my cigar into the air through his nostrils, he said, 
‘Senor, it would be perhaps better for you if I rode be- 
hind your party. You are not very far from Sulaco 
now. Go you with God.’ What would you.^ We 
went on. There was no resisting him. He might have 
been Hernandez himself; though my servant, who has 
been many times to Sulaco by sea, assured me that he 
had recognized him very well for the Capataz of the 
Steamship Company’s Cargadores. Later, that same 
evening, I saw that very man at the corner of the Plaza 
talking to a girl, a Morenita, who stood by the stirrup 
with her hand on the grey horse’s mane.” 

“I assure you, Senor Hirsch,” murmured Charles 
Gould, “that you ran no risk on this occasion.” 

“ That may be, senor, though I tremble yet. A most ^ 
fierce man — to look at. And what does it mean.^ A I 
person employed by the Steamship Company talking i 
with salteadores — no less, senor; the other horsemen 
were salteadores — in a lonely place, and behaving like 
a robber himself! A cigar is nothing, but what was 
there to prevent him asking me for my purse 

“No, no, Senor Hirsch,” Charles Gould murmured, 
letting his glance stray away a little vacantly from the 
round face, with its hooked beak upturned towards him 
in an almost childlike appeal. “If it was the Capataz 
de Cargadores you met — and there is no doubt, is there 
— you were perfectly safe.” 

“Thank you. You are very good. A very fierce- 
looking man, Don Carlos. He asked me for a cigar in a 
most familiar manner. What would have happened if 
I had not had a cigar I shudder yet. What business 
had he to be talking with robbers in a lonely place 


203 


I THE ISABELS 

I But Charles Gould, openly preoccupied now, gave 
!l not a sign, made no sound. The impenetrability of the 
j embodied Gould Concession had its surface shades. To 
I be dumb is merely a fatal affliction; but the King of 
i Sulaco had words enough to give him all the mysterious 
[ weight of a taciturn force. His silences, backed by 
I the power of speech, had as many shades of significance 
I as uttered words in the way of assent, of doubt, of 
negation — even of simple comment. Some seemed to 
I say plainly, “Think it over”; others meant clearly 
I “Go ahead,” a simple, low “I see,” with an affirmative 
nod, at the end of a patient listening half-hour was the 
equivalent of a verbal contract, which men had learned 
to trust implicitly, since behind it all there was the 
great San Tome mine, the head and front of the material 
interests, so strong that it depended on no man’s good- 
will in the whole length and breadth of the Occidental 
Province — that is, on no goodwill which it could not buy 
ten times over. But to the little hook-nosed man from 
Esmeralda, anxious about the export of hides, the 
silence of Charles Gould portended a failure. Evi- 
dently this was no time for extending a modest man’s 
business. He enveloped in a swift mental malediction 
the whole country, with all its inhabitants, partisans of 
Ribiera and Montero alike; and there were incipient 
tears in his mute anger at the thought of the in- 
numerable ox-hides going to waste upon the dreamy 
expanse of the Campo, with its single palms rising lilce 
ships at sea within the perfect circle of the horizon, its 
clumps of heavy timber motionless like solid islands of 
leaves above the running waves of grass. There were 
hides there, rotting, with no profit to anybody — rotting 
where they had been dropped by men called away to 
attend the urgent necessities of political revolutions. 
The practical, mercantile soul of Senor Hirsch rebelled 


m 


NOSTROMO 


against all that foolishness, while he was taking a 
respectful but disconcerted leave of the might and 
majesty of the San Tome mine in the person of Charles 
Gould. He could not restrain a heart-broken murmur, 
wrung out of his very aching heart, as it were. ; 

“It is a great, great foolishness, Don Carlos, all this, j 
The price of hides in Hamburg is gone up — up. Of 
course the Ribierist Government will do away with all 

that — when it gets established firmly. Meantime ” 

He sighed. | 

“Yes, meantime,” repeated Charles Gould, inscrut- 
ably. 

The other shrugged his shoulders. But he was not 
ready to go yet. There was a little matter he would like 
to mention very much if permitted. It appeared he had 
some good friends in Hamburg (he murmured the name ; 
of the firm) who were very anxious to do business, in 
dynamite, he explained. A contract for dynamite with I 
the San Tome mine, and then, perhaps, later on, other | 

mines, which were sure to The little man from | 

Esmeralda was ready to enlarge, but Charles inter- ^ 
rupted him. It seemed as though the patience of the 
Senor Administrador was giving way at last. 

“Sefior Hirsch,” he said, “I have enough dynamite 
stored up at the mountain to send it down crashing into 
the valley” — his voice rose a little — “to send half 
Sulaco into the air if I liked.” 

Charles Gould smiled at the round, startled eyes of 
the dealer in hides, who was murmuring hastily, “Just 
so. Just so.” And now he was going. It was im- 
possible to do business in explosives with an Adminis- 
trador so well provided and so discouraging. He had 
suffered agonies in the saddle and had exposed himself 
to the atrocities of the bandit Hernandez for nothing 
at all. Neither hides nor dynamite — and the very 


THE ISABELS 


205 


shoulders of the enterprising Israelite expressed de- 
jection. At the door he bowed low to the engineer-in- 
I chief. But at the bottom of the stairs in the patio he 
stopped short, with his podgy hand over his lips in an 
attitude of meditative astonishment. 

“'What does he want to keep so much dynamite for.^ ” 
he muttered. “And why does he talk like this to me? ” 

The engineer-in-chief, looking in at the door of the 
empty sala, whence the political tide had ebbed out to 
the last insignificant drop, nodded familiarly to the 
master of the house, standing motionless like a tall 
beacon amongst the deserted shoals of furniture. 

“Good-night, I am going. Got my bike downstairs. 
The railway will know where to go for dynamite should 
we get short at any time. We have done cutting and 
chopping for a while now. We shall begin soon to blast 
our way through.” 

“Don’t come to me,” said Charles Gould, with per- 
fect serenity. “I shan’t have an ounce to spare for 
anybody. Not an ounce. Not for my own brother, if 
I had a brother, and he were the engineer-in-chief of 
the most promising railway in the world.” 

“What’s that?” asked the engineer-in-chief, with 
equanimity. “Unkindness?” 

“No,” said Charles Gould, stolidly. “Policy.” 

“Radical, I should think,” the engineer-in-chief ob- 
served from the doorway. 

“Is that the right name?” Charles Gould said, from 
the middle of the room. 

“I mean, going to the roots, you know,” the engineer 
explained, with an air of enjoyment. 

“Why, yes,” Charles pronounced, slowly. “The 
Gould Concession has struck such deep roots in this 
country, in this province, in that gorge of the moun- 
tains, that nothing but dynamite shall be allowed to 


206 


NOSTROMO 


dislodge it from there. It’s my choice. It’s my last 
card to play.” 

The engineer- in-chief whistled low. “A pretty 
game,” he said, with a shade of discretion. “And ha\e 
you told Holroyd of that extraordinary trump card you 
hold in your hand?” 

“Card only when it’s played; when it falls at the end 
of the game. Till then you may call it a — a ” 

“Weapon,” suggested the railway man. 

“No. You may call it rather an argument,” cor- 
rected Charles Gould, gently. “And that’s how I’ve 
presented it to Mr. Holroyd.” 

“And what did he say to it? ” asked the engineer, with 
undisguised interest. 

“He” — Charles Gould spoke after a slight pause — 
“he said something about holding on like grim death 
and putting our trust in God. I should imagine he 
must have been rather startled. But then” — pursued 
the Administrador of the San Tome mine — “but then, 
he is very far away, you know, and, as they say in this 
country, God is very high above.” 

The engineer’s appreciative laugh died away down 
the stairs, where the Madonna with the Child on her 
arm seemed to look after his shaking broad back from 
her shallow niche. 


CHAPTER SIX 


i 


A PROFOUND stillness reigned in the Casa Gould. 
I The master of the house, walking along the corridor, 
opened the door of his room, and saw his wife sitting in 
a big armchair — his own smoking armchair — thought- 
ful, contemplating her little shoes. And she did not 
raise her eyes when he walked in. 

“Tired?” asked Charles Gould. 

“A little,” said Mrs. Gould. Still without looking 
up, she added with feeling, “ There is an awful sense of 
unreality about all this.” 

Charles Gould, before the long table strewn with 
papers, on which lay a hunting crop and a pair of spurs, 
stood looking at his wife: “The heat and dust must 
have been awful this afternoon by the waterside,” he 
murmured, sympathetically. “The glare on the water 
must have been simply terrible.” 

“One could close one’s eyes to the glare,” said Mrs. 
Gould. “But, my dear Charley, it is impossible for me 
to close my eyes to our position; to this awful . . .” 

She raised her eyes and looked at her husband’s face, 
from which all sign of sympathy or any other feeling 
had disappeared. “Why don’t you tell me some- 
thing?” she almost wailed. 

“I thought you had understood me perfectly from 
the first,” Charles Gould said, slowly. “I thought we 
had said all there was to say a long time ago. There 
is nothing to say now. There were things to be done. 
We have done them; we have gone on doing them. 
There is no going back now. I don’t suppose that, even 


207 


208 


NOSTROMO 


from the first, there was really any possible way back. 
And, what’s more, we can’t even afford to stand still.” 

“Ah, if one only knew how far you mean to go,” said 
his wife, inwardly trembling, but in an almost playful 
tone. 

“Any distance, any length, of course,” was the 
answer, in a matter-of-fact tone, which caused Mrs. 
Gould to make another effort to repress a shudder. 

She stood up, smiling graciously, and her little figure 
seemed to be diminished still more by the heavy mass of 
her hair and the long train of her gown. 

“But always to success,” she said, persuasively. 

Charles Gould, enveloping heir in the steely blue 
glance of his attentive eyes, answered without hesita- 
tion — 

“Oh, there is no alternative.” 

He put an immense assurance into his tone. As to 
the words, this was all that his conscience would allow 
him to say. 

Mrs. Gould’s smile remained a shade too long upon 
her lips. She murmured — 

“I will leave you; I’ve a slight headache. The heat, 

the dust, were indeed I suppose you are going 

back to the mine before the morning.^^” 

“At midnight,” said Charles Gould. “We are bring- 
ing down the silver to-morrow. Then I shall take three 
whole days off in town with you.” 

“Ah, you are going to meet the escort. I shall be on 
the balcony at five o’clock to see you pass. Till then, 
good-bye.” 

Charles Gould walked rapidly round the table, and, 
seizing her hands, bent down, pressing them both to his 
lips. Before he straightened himself up again to his full 
height she had disengaged one to smooth his cheek with 
a light touch, as if he were a little boy. 


THE ISABELS 


209 


Try to get some rest for a couple of hours,” she mur- 
mured, with a glance at a hammock stretched in a 
distant part of the room. Her long train swished 
softly after her on the red tiles. At the door she 
looked back. 

Two big lamps with unpolished glass globes bathed in 
a soft and abundant light the four white walls of the 
room, with a glass case of arms, the brass hilt of Henry 
Gould’s cavalry sabre on its square of velvet, and the 
water-colour sketch of the San Tome gorge. And Mrs. 
Gould, gazing at the last in its black wooden frame, 
sighed out — 

“Ah, if we had left it alone, Charley!” 

“No,” Charles Gould said, moodily; “it was im- 
possible to leave it alone.” 

“Perhaps it was impossible,” Mrs. Gould admitted, 
i slowly. Her lips quivered a little, but she smiled with 
an air of dainty bravado. “We have disturbed a good 
many snakes in that Paradise, Charley, haven’t we.^” 

! “Yes, I remember,” said Charles Gould, “it was 
iDon Pepe who called the gorge the Paradise of snakes. 
No doubt we have disturbed a great many. But re- 
member, my dear, that it is not now as it was when you 
[made that sketch.” He waved his hand towards the 
small water-colour hanging alone upon the great bare 
[wall. “It is no longer a Paradise of snakes. We have 
brought mankind into it, and we cannot turn our backs 
upon them to go and begin a new life elsewhere.” 

He confronted his wife with a firm, concentrated gaze, 
which Mrs. Gould returned with a brave assumption of 
fearlessness before she went out, closing the door gently 
after her. 

In contrast with the white glaring room the dimly 
lit corridor had a restful mysteriousness of a forest 
glade, suggested by the stems and the leaves of the 


210 


NOSTROMO 


plants ranged along the balustrade of the open side. In 
the streaks of light falling through the open doors of the 
reception-rooms, the blossoms, white and red and pale 
lilac, came out vivid with the brilliance of flowers in a 
stream of sunshine; and Mrs. Gould, passing on, had the 
vividness of a figure seen in the clear patches of sun that 
chequer the gloom of open glades in the woods. The 
stones in the rings upon her hand pressed to her fore- 
head glittered in the lamplight abreast of the door of the 
sala. 

“Who's there?” she asked, in a startled voice. “Is 
that you, Basilio?” She looked in, and saw Martin 
Decoud walking about, with an air of having lost some- 
thing, amongst the chairs and tables. 

“Antonia has forgotten her fan in here,” said De- 
coud, with a strange air of distraction; “so I entered 
to see.” 

But, even as he said this, he had obviously given up 
his search, and walked straight towards Mrs. Gould, 
who looked at him with doubtful surprise. 

“Senora,” he began, in a low voice. 

“What is it, Don Martin?” asked Mrs. Gould. And 
then she added, with a slight laugh, “I am so nervous 
to-day,” as if to explain the eagerness of the question, 

“Nothing immediately dangerous,” said Decoudl 
who now could not conceal his agitation. “Pray don’t 
distress yourself. No, really, you must not distress 
yourself.” 1 1 

Mrs. Gould, with her candid eyes very wide open;j 
her lips composed into a smile, was steadying herself i 
in the doorway with a little bejewelled hand. 

“Perhaps you don’t know how alarming you are|i 
appearing like this unexpectedly ” i 

“I! Alarming!” he protested, sincerely vexed ancj! 
surprised. “I assure you that I am not in the lea^ 


THE ISABELS 


211 


alarmed myself. A fan is lost; well, it will be found 
again. But I don’t think it is here. It is a fan I 
am looking for. I cannot understand how Antonia 
could Well! Have you found it, amigo.^” 

“No, senor,” said behind Mrs. Gould the soft voice 
of Basilio, the head servant of the Casa. “I don’t 
! think the senorita could have left it in this house at all.” 

I “Go and look for it in the patio again. Go now, my 
friend; look for it on the steps, under the gate; examine 
every flagstone; search for it till I come down 
! again. . . . That fellow” — he addressed himself 

i in English to Mrs. Gould — “is always stealing up be- 
hind one’s back on his bare feet. I set him to look for 
that fan directly I came in to justify my reappearance, 
my sudden return.” 

He paused and Mrs. Gould said, amiably, “You are 
always welcome.” She paused for a second, too. “But 
I am waiting to learn the cause of your return.” 

Decoud affected suddenly the utmost nonchalance. 

“I can’t bear to be spied upon. Oh, the cause.^ 
Yes, there is a cause; there is something else that is lost 
besides Antonia’s favourite fan. As I was walking 
home after seeing Don Jose and Antonia to their house, 
the Capataz de Cargadores, riding down the street, 
spoke to me.” 

“Has anything happened to the Violas?” inquired 
Mrs. Gould. 

“The Violas? You mean the old Garibaldino who 
keeps the hotel where the engineers live? Nothing 
happened there. The Capataz said nothing of them; he 
only told me that the telegraphist of the Cable Com- 
pany was walking on the Plaza, bareheaded, looking out 
for me. There is news from the interior, Mrs. Gould. 
I should rather say rumours of news.” 

“Good news?” said Mrs. Gould in a low voice. 


212 


NOSTROINIO 


“Worthless, I should think. But if I must define 
them, I would say bad. They are to the effect that a 
two days’ battle had been fought near Sta. Marta, and 
that the Ribierists are defeated. It must have hap- 
pened a few days ago — perhaps a week. The rumour 
has just reached Cayta, and the man in charge of the 
cable station there has telegraphed the news to his 
colleague here. We might just as well have kept 
Barrios in Sulaco.” 

“What’s to be done now.^” murmured Mrs. Gould. 

“Nothing. He’s at sea with the troops. He will 
get to Cayta in a couple of days’ time and learn the 
news there. What he will do then, who can say.^ 
Hold Cayta.^ Offer his submission to Montero.^ Dis- 
band his army — this last most likely, and go himself 
in one of the O.S.N. Company’s steamers, north or 
south — to Valparaiso or to San Francisco, no matter i 
where. Our Barrios has a great practice in exiles and 
repatriations, which mark the points in the political 
game.” 

Decoud, exchanging a steady stare with Mrs. Gould, 
added, tentatively, as it were, “And yet, if we had 
Barrios with his 2,000 improved rifles here, something 
could have been done.” 

“Montero victorious, completely victorious!” Mrs. 
Gould breathed out in a tone of unbelief. 

“A canard, probably. That sort of bird is hatched 
in great numbers in such times as these. And even if it 
were true.^ Well, let us put things at their worst, let 1 
us say it is true.” ‘ 

“Then everything is lost,” said Mrs. Gould, with the 
calmness of despair. 

Suddenly she seemed to divine, she seemed to see ; 
Decoud ’s tremendous excitement under its cloak of J 
studied carelessness. It was, indeed, becoming visible 1 


213 


THE ISABELS 

in his audacious and watchful stare, in the curve, half- 
reckless, half-contemptuous, of his lips. And a French 
phrase came upon them as if, for this Costaguanero of 
the Boulevard, that had been the only forcible lan- 
guage— 

Non, Madame. Rien n^est perdu.*^ 

It electrified Mrs. Gould out of her benumbed atti- 
I tude, and she said, vivaciously — 

S “What would you think of doing 

But already there was something of mockery in 
Decoud’s suppressed excitement. 

“What would you expect a true Costaguanero to do.^ 
Another revolution, of course. On my word of honour, 

I Mrs. Gould, I believe I am a true hijo del pays, a true 
son of the country, whatever Father Corbelan may say. 
And I’m not so much of an unbeliever as not to have 
faith in my own ideas, in my own remedies, in my own 
! desires.” 

“Yes,” said Mrs. Gould, doubtfully. 

I “You don’t seem convinced,” Decoud went on again 
in French. “Say, then, in my passions.” 

Mrs. Gould received this addition unflinchingly. To 
understand it thoroughly she did not require to hear 
his muttered assurance — 

“There is nothing I would not do for the sake of 
Antonia. There is nothing I am not prepared to under- 
take. There is no risk I am not ready to run.” 

Decoud seemed to find a fresh audacity in this voicing 
of his thoughts. “You would not believe me if I were 
to say that it is the love of the country which ” 

She made a sort of discouraged protest with her arm, 
as if to express that she had given up expecting that 
motive from any one. 

“A Sulaco revolution,” Decoud pursued in a forcible 
undertone. “The Great Cause may be served here. 


214 


NOSTROMO 


on the very spot of its inception, in the place of its 
birth, Mrs. Gould.” 

Frowning, and biting her lower lip thoughtfully, she 
made a step away from the door. 

“ You are not going to speak to your husband? ” De- 
coud arrested her anxiously. 

“But you will need his help?” 

“No doubt,” Decoud admitted without hesitation. 
“Everything turns upon the San Tome mine, but I 
would rather he didn’t know anything as yet of my — 
my hopes.” 

A puzzled look came upon Mrs. Gould’s face, and 
Decoud, approaching, explained confidentially — 

“Don’t you see, he’s such an idealist.” 

Mrs. Gould flushed pink, and her eyes grew darker 
at the same time. 

“Charley an idealist!” she said, as if to herself, 
wonderingly. “What on earth do you mean?” i! 

“Yes,” conceded Decoud, “it’s a wonderful thing to |i 
say with the sight of the San Tome mine, the greatest jl 
fact in the whole of South America, perhaps, before our \ 
very eyes. But look even at that, he has idealized this 

fact to a point ” He paused. “Mrs. Gould, are 

you aware to what point he has idealized the existence, 
the worth, the meaning of the San Tome mine? Are | 
you aware of it?” i 

He must have known what he was talking about. 

The effect he expected was produced. Mrs. Gould, i 
ready to take fire, gave it up suddenly with a low little i 
sound that resembled a moan. i 

“What do you know?” she asked in a feeble voice. ! 

“Nothing,” answered Decoud, firmly. “But, then, i 
don’t you see,, he’s an Englishman?” : 

“Well, what of that?” asked Mrs. Gould. j 

“Simply that he cannot act or exist without idealizing 


THE ISABELS 


215 


I 

jevery simple feeling, desire, or achievement. He could 
1 not believe his own motives if he did not make them 
|first a part of some fairy tale. The earth is not quite 
good enough for him, I fear. Do you excuse my frank- 
ness.^ Besides, whether you excuse it or not, it is part 
of the truth of things which hurts the — what do you call 
them.^^ — the Anglo-Saxon’s susceptibilities, and at the 
present moment I don’t feel as if I could treat seriously 
either his conception of things or — if you allow me to 
say so — or yet yours.” 

Mrs. Gould gave no sign of being offended. “I sup- 
pose Antonia understands you thoroughly.^” 

“Understands? Well, yes. But I am not sure that 

I she approves. That, however, makes no difference. I 
am honest enough to tell you that, Mrs. Gould.” 
“Your idea, of course, is separation,” she said. 

' “Separation, of course,” declared Martin. “Yes; 

I separation of the whole Occidental Province from the 
‘ rest of the unquiet body. But my true idea, the only 
; one I care for, is not to be separated from Antonia.” 

“And that is all?” asked Mrs. Gould, without 
severity. 

“Absolutely. I am not deceiving myself about my 
motives. She won’t leave Sulaco for my sake, there- 
fore Sulaco must leave the rest of the Republic to its 
fate. Nothing could be clearer than that. I like 
a clearly defined situation. I cannot part with An- 
tonia, therefore the one and indivisible Republic of 
Costaguana must be made to part with its western 
province. Fortunately it happens to be also a sound 
policy. The richest, the most fertile part of this land 
may be saved from anarchy. Personally, I care little, 
very little; but it’s a fact that the establishment of 
Montero in power would mean death to me. In all the 
proclamations of general pardon which I have seen. 


£16 


NOSTROMO 


my name, with a few others, is specially excepted. The 
brothers hate me, as you know very well, Mrs. Gould; 
and behold, here is the rumour of them having won a 
battle. You say that supposing it is true, I have plenty 
of time to run away.’’ 

The slight, protesting murmur on the part of Mrs. 
Gould made him pause for a moment, while he looked 
at her with a sombre and resolute glance. 

“Ah, but I would, Mrs. Gould. I would run away 
if it served that which at present is my only desire. I 
am courageous enough to say that, and to do it, too. 
But women, even our women, are idealists. It is 
Antonia that won’t run away. A novel sort of vanity.” 

“You call it vanity,” said Mrs. Gould, in a shocked 
voice. 

“Say pride, then, which. Father Corbelan would tell 
you, is a mortal sin. But I am not proud. I am simply 
too much in love to run away. At the same time I 
want to live. There is no love for a dead man. There- 
fore it is necessary that Sulaco should not recognize the 
victorious Montero.” 

“And you think my husband will give you his sup- 
port.^” ^ 

“I think he can be drawn into it, like all idealists, 
when he once sees a sentimental basis for his action. 
But I wouldn’t talk to him. Mere clear facts won’t 
appeal to his sentiment. It is much better for him to 
convince himself in his own way. And, frankly, I could 
not, perhaps, just now pay sufficient respect to either 
his motives or even, perhaps, to yours, Mrs. Gould.” 

It was evident that Mrs. Gould was very determined 
not to be offended. She smiled vaguely, while she 
seemed to think the matter over. As far as she could 
judge from the girl’s half -confidences, Antonia under- 
stood that young man. Obviously there was promise of 




THE ISABELS 217 

safety in his plan, or rather in his idea. Moreover, 

I right or wrong; the idea could do no harm. And it was 
quite possible, also, that the rumour was false. 

“ You have some sort of a plan,” she said. 

“Simplicity itself. Barrios has started, let him go 
j on then; he will hold Cayta, which is the door of the sea 
route to Sulaco. They cannot send a sufficient force 
over the mountains. No; not even to cope with the 
band of Hernandez. Meantime we shall organize our 
resistance here. And for that, this very Hernandez 
will be useful. He has defeated troops as a bandit; he 
will no doubt accomplish the same thing if he is made a 
colonel or even a general. You know the country well 
enough not to be shocked by what I say, Mrs. Gould. 
I have heard you assert that this poor bandit was the 
living,breathing example of cruelty, injustice, stupidity, 
and oppression, that ruin men’s souls as well as their 
fortunes in this country. Well, there would be some 
poetical retribution in that man arising to crush the evils 
which had driven an honest ranchero into a life of 
crime. A fine idea of retribution in that, isn’t there.^^” 
Decoud had dropped easily into English, which he 
spoke with precision, very correctly, but with too many 
z sounds. ^ 

“Think also of your hospitals, of your schools, of 
your ailing mothers and feeble old men, of all that 
population which you and your husband have brought 
into the rocky gorge of San Tome. Are you not re- 
sponsible to your conscience for all these people. Is it 
not worth while to make another effort, which is not at 

all so desperate as it looks, rather than ” 

Decoud finished his thought with an upward toss of 
the arm, suggesting annihilation; and Mrs. Gould 
turned away her head with a look of horror. 

“Why don’t you say all this to my husband.'^” she 


218 


NOSTROMO 


asked, without looking at Decoud, who stood watching 
the effect of his words. 

“Ah! But Don Carlos is so English,” he began. 
Mrs. Gould interrupted — 

“Leave that alone, Don Martin. He’s as much a 

Costaguanero No! He’s more of a Costaguanero 

than yourself.” 

“Sentimentalist, sentimentalist,” Decoud almost 
cooed, in a tone of gentle and soothing deference. 
“Sentimentalist, after the amazing manner of your 
people. I have been watching El Rey de Sulaco since 
I came here on a fool’s errand, and perhaps impelled by 
some treason of fate lurking behind the unaccountable 
turns of a man’s life. But I don’t matter, I am not a 
sentimentalist, I cannot endow my personal desires 
with a shining robe of silk and jewels. Life is not for 
me a moral romance derived from the tradition of a 
pretty fairy tale. No, Mrs. Gould; I am practical. I 
am not afraid of my motives. But, pardon me, I have 
been rather carried away. What I wish to say is that I 
have been observing. I won’t tell you what I have 
discovered ’ ’ 

“No. That is unnecessary,” whispered Mrs. Gould, 
once more averting her head. 

“ It is. Except one little fact, that your husband does 
not like me. It’s a small matter, which, in the circum- 
stances, seems to acquire a perfectly ridiculous im- 
portance. Ridiculous and immense; for, clearly, money 
is required for my plan,” he reflected; then added, 
meaningly, “and we have two sentimentalists to deal 
with.” 

“ I don’t know that I understand you, Don Martin,” 
said Mrs. Gould, coldly, preserving the low key of their 
conversation. “But, speaking as if I did, who is the 
other.?” 


THE ISABELS 


219 


“The great Holroyd in San Francisco, of course,” 
Decoud whispered, lightly. “I think you understand 
me very well. Women are idealists; but then they are 
so perspicacious.” 

But whatever was the reason of that remark, dis- 
paraging and complimentary at the same time, Mrs. 
Gould seemed not to pay attention to it. The name of 
Holroyd had given a new tone to her anxiety. 

“ The silver escort is coming down to the harbour to- 
morrow; a whole six months’ working, Don Martin!” 
she cried in dismay. 

“Let it come down, then,” breathed out Decoud, 
earnestly, almost into her ear. 

“But if the rumour should get about, and especially 
if it turned out true, troubles might break out in the 
town,” objected Mrs. Gould. 

Decoud admitted that it was possible. He knew 
well the town children of the Sulaco Campo: sullen, 
thievish, vindictive, and ‘ bloodthirsty, whatever great 
qualities their brothers of the plain might have had. 
But then there was that other sentimentalist, who 
attached a strangely idealistic meaning to concrete 
facts. This stream of silver must be kept flowing 
north to return in the form of financial backing from the 
great house of Holroyd. Up at the mountain in the 
strong room of the mine the silver bars were worth less 
for his purpose than so much lead, from which at least 
bullets may be run. Let it come down to the harbour, 
ready for shipment. 

The next north-going steamer would carry it off for 
the very salvation of the San Tome mine, which has 
produced so much treasure. And, moreover, the 
rumour was probably false, he remarked, with much 
conviction in his hurried tone. 

“Besides, senora,” concluded Decoud, “we may 


£20 


NOSTROMO 


suppress it for many days. I have been talking with 
the telegraphist in the middle of the Plaza Mayor; thus 
1 am certain that we could not have been overheard. 
There was not even a bird in the air near us. And also 
let me tell you something more. I have been making 
friends with this man called Nostromo, the Capataz. 
We had a conversation this very evening, I walking by 
the side of his horse as he rode slowly out of the town 
just now. He promised me that if a riot took place for 
any reason — even for the most political of reasons, you 
understand — his Cargadores, an important part of the 
populace, you will admit, should be found on the side of 
the Europeans.” 

“He has promised you that.^” Mrs. Gould inquired, 
with interest. “What made him make that promise to 
you?” 

“Upon my word, I don’t know,” declared Decoud, in 
a slightly surprised tone. “He certainly promised me 
that, but now you ask me why' I certainly could not tell 
you his reasons. He talked with his usual carelessness, 
which, if he had been anything else but a common 
sailor, I would call a pose or an affectation.” 

Decoud, interrupting himself, looked at Mrs. Gould 
curiously. 

“Upon the whole,” he continued, “I suppose he 
expects something to his advantage from it. You 
mustn’t forget that he does not exercise his extraor- 
dinary power over the lower classes without a certain 
amount of personal risk and without a great profusion 
in spending his money. One must pay in some way or 
other for such a solid thing as individual prestige. He 
told me after we made friends at a dance, in a Posada 
kept by a Mexican just outside the walls, that he had 
come here to make his fortune. I suppose he looks 
upon his prestige as a sort of investment.” 


THE ISABELS 


221 


‘‘Perhaps he prizes it for its own sake,” Mrs. Gould 
said in a tone as if she were repelling an undeserved 
aspersion. “Viola, the Garibaldino, with whom he has 
lived for some years, calls him the Incorruptible.” 

“Ah! he belongs to the group of your proUges out 
there towards the harbour, Mrs. Gould. Muy Men. 
And Captain Mitchell calls him wonderful. I have 
heard no end of tales of his strength, his audacity, his 
fidelity. No end of fine things. H’m! incorruptible! 
It is indeed a name of honour for the Capataz of the 
Cargadores of Sulaco. Incorruptible ! Fine, but vague. 
However, I suppose he’s sensible, too. And I talked to 
him upon that sane and practical assumption.” 

“I prefer to think him disinterested, and therefore 
trustworthy,” Mrs. Gould said, with the nearest ap- 
proach to curtness it was in her nature to assume. 

“Well, if so, then the silver will be still more safe. 
Let it come down, senora. Let it come down, so that it 
may go north and return to us in the shape of credit.” 

Mrs. Gould glanced along the corridor towards the 
door of her husband’s room. Decoud, watching her as 
if she had his fate in her hands, detected an almost 
imperceptible nod of assent. He bowed with a smile, 
and, putting his hand into the breast pocket of his coat, 
pulled out a fan of light feathers set upon painted leaves 
of sandal-wood. “I had it in my pocket,” he mur- 
mured, triumphantly, “for a plausible pretext.” He 
bowed again. “Good-night, senora.” 

Mrs. Gould continued along the corridor away from 
her husband’s room. The fate of the San Tome mine 
was lying heavy upon her heart. It was a long time 
now since she had begun to fear it. It had been an 
idea. She had watched it with misgivings turning into 
a fetish, and now the fetish had grown into a monstrous 
and crushing weight. It was as if the inspiration of 


222 


NOSTROMO 


their early years had left her heart to turn into a wall of 
silver-bricks, erected by the silent work of evil spirits, 
between her and her husband. He seemed to dwell 
alone within a circumvallation of precious metal, leav- 
ing her outside with her school, her hospital, the sick 
mothers and the feeble old men, mere insignificant 
vestiges of the initial inspiration. “Those poor peo- 
ple!’’ she murmured to herself. 

Below she heard the voice of Martin Decoud in the 
patio speaking loudly: 

“I have found Dona Antonia’s fan, Basilio. Look, 
here it is!” 


CHAPTER SEVEN 


It WAS part of what Decoud would have called his 
sane materialism that he did not believe in the possi- 
bility of friendship between man and woman. 

The one exception he allowed confirmed, he main- 
tained, that absolute rule. Friendship was possible 
between brother and sister, meaning by friendship the 
frank unreserve, as before another human being, of 
thoughts and sensations; all the objectless and neces- 
sary sincerity of one’s innermost life trying to re-act 
upon the profound sympathies of another existence. 

His favourite sister, the handsome, slightly arbitrary 
and resolute angel, ruling the father and mother Decoud 
in the first-floor apartments of a very fine Parisian 
house, was the recipient of Martin Decoud’s con- 
fidences as to his thoughts, actions, purposes, doubts, 
and even failures. . . . 

“Prepare our little circle in Paris for the birth of 
another South American Republic. One more or less, 
what does it matter They may come into the world 
like evil flowers on a hotbed of rotten institutions; but 
the seed of this one has germinated in your brother’s 
brain, and that will be enough for your devoted as- 
sent. I am writing this to you by the light of a single 
candle, in a sort of inn, near the harbour, kept by an 
Italian called Viola, a 'protege of Mrs. Gould. The 
whole building, which, for all I know, may have been 
contrived by a Conquistador farmer of the pearl 
fishery three hundred years ago, is perfectly silent. So 
is the plain between the town and the harbour; silent, 
223 


224 


NOSTROMO 


but not so dark as the house, because the pickets of 
Italian workmen guarding the railway have lighted little 
fires all along the line. It was not so quiet around here 
yesterday. We had an awful riot — a sudden outbreak 
of the populace, which was not suppressed till late to- 
day. Its object, no doubt, was loot, and that was de- 
feated, as you must have learned already from the 
cablegram sent via San Francisco and New York last 
night, when the cables were still open. You have read 
already there that the energetic action of the Europeans 
of the railway has saved the town from destruction, and 
you may believe that. I wrote out the cable myself. 
We have no Reuter’s agency man here. I have also 
fired at the mob from the windows of the club, in com- 
pany with some other young men of position. Our 
object was to keep the Calle de la Constitucion clear for 
the exodus of the ladies and children, who have taken 
refuge on board a couple of cargo ships now in the har- 
bour here. That was yesterday. You should also 
have learned from the eable that the missing President, 
Ribiera, who had disappeared after the battle of Sta. 
Marta, has turned up here in Sulaco by one of those 
strange coincidences that are almost incredible, riding 
on a lame mule into the very midst of the street fight- 
ing. It appears that he had fled, in company of a 
muleteer called Bonifacio, across the mountains from 
the threats of Montero into the arms of an enraged 
mob. 

“The Capataz of Cargadores, that Italian sailor of 
whom I have written to you before, has saved him from 
an ignoble death. That man seems to have a particu- 
lar talent for being on the spot whenever there is some- 
thing picturesque to be done. 

“He was with me at four o’clock in the morning at the 
offices of the Porvenir, where he had turned up so early 


THE ISABELS 


225 


in order to warn me of the coming trouble, and also to 
assure me that he would keep his Cargadores on the 
side of order. A\hen the full daylight came we were 
looking together at the crowd on foot and on horseback, 
demonstrating on the Plaza and shying stones at the 
windows of the Intendencia. Nostromo (that is the 
name they call him by here) was pointing out to me 
his Cargadores interspersed in the mob. 

“The sun shines late upon Sulaco, for it has first to 
climb above the mountains. In that clear morning 
light, brighter than twilight, Nostromo saw right across 
the vast Plaza, at the end of the street beyond the 
cathedral, a mounted man apparently in difficulties with 
a yelling knot of leperos. At once he said to me, ‘That’s 
a stranger. What is it they are doing to him.?’ Then 
he took out the silver whistle he is in the habit of using 
on the wharf (this man seems to disdain the use of any 
metal less precious than silver) and blew into it twice, 
evidently a preconcerted signal for his Cargadores. He 
ran out immediately, and they rallied round him. I 
ran out, too, but was too late to follow them and help 
in the rescue of the stranger, whose animal had fallen. 
I was set upon at once as a hated aristocrat, and was 
only too glad to get into the club, where Don Jaime 
Berges (you may remember him visiting at our house 
in Paris some three years ago) thrust a sporting gun into 
my hands. They were already firing from the windows. 
There were little heaps of cartridges lying about on the 
open card- tables. I remember a couple of overturned 
chairs, some bottles rolling on the floor amongst the 
packs of cards scattered suddenly as the Caballeros 
rose from their game to open fire upon the mob. Most 
of the young men had spent the night at the club in the 
expectation of some such disturbance. In two of the 
candelabra, on the consoles, the candles were burning 


226 


NOSTROMO 


down in their sockets. A large iron nut, probably 
stolen from the railway workshops, flew in from the 
street as I entered, and broke one of the large mirrors 
set in the wall. I noticed also one of the club servants 
tied up hand and foot with the cords of the curtain and 
flung in a corner. I have a vague recollection of Don 
Jaime assuring me hastily that the fellow had been 
detected putting poison into the dishes at supper. But 
I remember distinctly he was shrieking for mercy, with- 
out stopping at all, continuously, and so absolutely 
disregarded that nobody even took the trouble to gag 
him. The noise he made was so disagreeable that I had 
half a mind to do it myself. But there was no time to 
waste on such trifles. I took my place at one of the 
windows and began firing. 

“I didn’t learn till later in the afternoon whom it was 
that Nostromo, with his Cargadores and some Italian 
workmen as well, had managed to save from those 
drunken rascals. That man has a peculiar talent when 
anything striking to the imagination has to be done. I 
made that remark to him afterwards when we met after 
some sort of order had been restored in the town, and 
the answer he made rather surprised me. He said quite 
moodily, ‘And how much do I get for that, sen or 
Then it dawned upon me that perhaps this man’s vanity 
has been satiated by the adulation of the common 
people and the confidence of his superiors!” 

Decoud paused to light a cigarette, then, with his 
head still over his writing, he blew a cloud of smoke, 
which seemed to rebound from the paper. He took 
up the pencil again. 

“That was yesterday evening on the Plaza, while he 
sat on the steps of the cathedral, his hands between his 
knees, holding the bridle of his famous silver-grey mare. 
He had led his body of Cargadores splendidly all day 


THE ISABELS 


227 


long. He looked fatigued. I don’t know how I 
looked. Very dirty, I suppose. But I suppose I also 
looked pleased. From the time the fugitive President 
had been got off to the S. S. Minerva, the tide of success- 
had turned against the mob. They had been driven off 
the harbour, and out of the better streets of the town, in- 
to their own maze of ruins and tolderias. You must un- 
derstand that this riot, whose primary object was un- 
doubtedly the getting hold of the‘ San Tome silver 
stored in the lower rooms of the Custom House (be- 
sides the general looting of the Ricos), had acquired a 
political colouring from the fact of two Deputies to the 
Provincial Assembly, Senores Gamacho and Fuentes, 
both from Bolson, putting themselves at the head of 
it — late in the afternoon, it is true, when the mob, dis- 
appointed in their hopes of loot, made a stand in the 
narrow streets to the cries of ‘Viva la Libertad ! Down 
with Feudalism!’ (I wonder what they imagine 
feudalism to be.^) ‘Down with the Goths and Para- 
lytics.’ I suppose the Senores Gamacho and Fuentes 
knew what they were doing. They are prudent gentle- 
men. In the Assembly they called themselves Moder- 
ates, and opposed every energetic measure with philan- 
thropic pensiveness. At the first rumours of Montero’s 
victory, they began to show a subtle change of the 
pensive temper, and began to defy poor Don Juste 
Lopez in his Presidential tribune with an effrontery 
to which the poor man could only respond by a dazed 
smoothing of his beard and the ringing of the Pres- 
idential bell. Then, when the downfall of the Ribierist 
cause became confirmed beyond the shadow of a doubt, 
they have blossomed into convinced Liberals, acting 
together as if they were Siamese twins, and ultimately 
taking charge, as it were, of the riot in the name of 
Monterist principles. 


m 


NOSTROMO 


“ Their last move of eight o’clock last night was to 
organize themselves into a Monterist Committee which 
sits, as far as I know, in a posada kept by a retired 
Mexican bull-fighter, a great politician, too, whose 
name I have forgotten. Thence they have issued a 
communication to us, the Goths and Paralytics of the ( 
Amarilla Club (who have our own committee), inviting ! 
us to come to some provisional understanding for a 
truce, in order, they have the impudence to say, that 
the noble cause of Liberty ‘should not be stained by the 
criminal excesses of Conservative selfishness!’ As I 
came out to sit with Nostromo on the cathedral steps 
the club was busy considering a proper reply in the 
principal room, littered with exploded cartridges, with 
a lot of broken glass, blood smears, candlesticks, and all 
sorts of wreckage on the floor. But all this is non- 
sense. Nobody in the town has any real power except 
the railway engineers, whose men occupy the dismantled 
houses acquired by the Company for their town station 
on one side of the Plaza, and Nostromo, whose Carga- 
dores were sleeping under the arcades along the front of 
Anzani’s shops. A fire of broken furniture out of the 
Intendencia saloons, mostly gilt, was burning on the 
Plaza, in a high flame swaying right upon the statue of 
Charles IV. The dead body of a man was lying on the 
steps of the pedestal, his arms thrown wide open, and 
his sombrero covering his face — the attention of some 
friend, perhaps. The light of the flame touched the 
foliage of the first trees on the Alameda, and played on 
the end of a side street near by, blocked up by a jumble 
of ox-carts and dead bullocks. Sitting on one of the 
carcases, a lepero, muffled up, smoked a cigarette. It 
was a truce, you understand. The only other living 
being on the Plaza besides ourselves was a Cargador 
walking to and fro, with a long, bare knife in his hand. 


229 


THE ISxiPELS 

like a sentry before the Arcades, where his friends were 
sleeping. And the only other spot of light in the dark 
j town were the lighted windows of the club, at the corner 
I of the Calle.” 

After having written so far, Don Martin Decoud, the 
exotic dandy of the Parisian boulevard, got up and 
walked across the sanded floor of the cafe at one end of 
the Albergo of United Italy, kept by Giorgio Viola, the 
old companion of Garibaldi. The highly coloured 
lithograph of the Faithful Hero seemed to look dimty, 
in the light of one candle, at the man with no faith in 
anything except the truth of his own sensations. Look- 
ing out of the window, Decoud was met by a darkness so 
impenetrable that he could see neither the mountains 
nor the town, nor yet the buildings near the harbour; 
and there was not a sound, as if the tremendous ob- 
scurity of the Placid Gulf, spreading from the waters 
over the land, had made it dumb as well as blind. 
Presently Decoud felt a light tremor of the floor and a 
distant clank of iron. A bright white light appeared, 
deep in the darkness, growing bigger with a thundering 
noise. The rolling stock usually kept on the sidings in 
Rincon was being run back to the yards for safe keeping. 
Like a mysterious stirring of the darkness behind the 
headlight of the engine, the train passed in a gust of 
hollow uproar, by the end of the house, which seemed to 
vibrate all over in response. And nothing was clearly 
visible but, on the end of the last flat car, a negro, in 
white trousers and naked to the waist, swinging a 
blazing torch basket incessantly with a circular move- 
ment of his bare arm. Decoud did not stir. i 

Behind him, on the back of the chair from which he 
had risen, hung his elegant Parisian overcoat, with a 
pearl-grey silk lining. But when he turned back to 
come to the table the candlelight fell upon a face that 


230 


NOSTROMO 


was grimy and scratched. His rosy lips were blackened 
with heat, the smoke of gun-powder. Dirt and rust 
tarnished the lustre of his short beard. His shirt collar 
and cuffs were crumpled ; the blue silken tie hung down 
his breast like a rag; a greasy smudge crossed his white 
brow. He had not taken off his clothing nor used 
water, except to snatch a hasty drink greedily, for some 
forty hours. An awful restlessness had made him its 
own, had marked him with all the signs of desperate 
strife, and put a dry, sleepless stare into his eyes. He 
murmured to himself in a hoarse voice, “I wonder if 
there’s any bread here,” looked vaguely about him, then 
dropped into the chair and took the pencil up again. 
He became aware he had not eaten anything for many 
hours. 

It occurred to him that no One could understand him 
so well as his sister. In the most sceptical heart there 
lurks at such moments, when the chances of existence 
are involved, a desire to leave a correct impression of 
the feelings, like a light by which the action may be 
seen when personality is gone, gone where no light of 
investigation can ever reach the truth which every 
death takes out of the world. Therefore, instead of 
looking for something to eat, or trying to snatch an hour 
or so of sleep, Decoud was filling the pages of a large 
pocket-book with a letter to his sister. 

In the intimacy of that intercourse he could not keep 
out his weariness, his great fatigue, the close touch of his 
bodily sensations. He began again as if he were talking 
to her. With almost an illusion of her presence, he 
wrote the phrase, ‘‘I am very hungry.” 

‘T have the feeling of a great solitude around me,” 
he continued. ‘"Is it, perhaps, because I am the only 
man with a definite idea in his head, in the complete 
collapse of every resol ve? intention, and hope about me? 


THE ISABELS 


231 


But the solitude is also very real. All the engineers are 
out, and have been for two days, looking after the 
property of the National Central Railway, of that 
great Costaguana undertaking which is to put money 
into the pockets of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Americans, 
Germans, and God knows who else. The silence about 
me is ominous. There is above the middle part of this 
house a sort of first floor, with narrow openings like 
loopholes for windows, probably used in old times for 
the better defence against the savages, when the per- 
sistent barbarism of our native continent did not wear the 
black coats of politicians, but went about yelling, half- 
naked, with bows and arrows in its hands. The woman 
of the house is dying up there, I believe, all alone with 
her old husband. There is a narrow staircase, the sort 
of staircase one man could easily defend against a mob, 
leading up there, and I have just heard, through the 
thickness of the wall, the old fellow going down into 
their kitchen for something or other. It was a sort of 
noise a mouse might make behind the plaster of a wall. 
All the servants they had ran away yesterday and have 
not returned yet, if ever they do. For the rest, there 
are only two children here, two girls. The father has 
sent them downstairs, and they have crept into this 
cafe, perhaps because I am here. They huddle together 
in a corner, in each other’s arms; I just noticed them a 
few minutes ago, and I feel more lonely than ever.” 

Decoud turned* half round in his chair, and asked, 
“Is there any bread here.^” 

Linda’s dark head was shaken negatively in response, 
above the fair head of her sister nestling on her breast. 

“You couldn’t get me some bread.?^” insisted Decoud. 
The child did not move; he saw her large eyes stare at 
him very dark from the corner, “You’re not afraid 
of me.^” he said. 


^ 3 ^ 


NOSTROMO 


“No,” said Linda, “we are not afraid of you. You ' 
came here with Gian’ Battista.” I 

“You mean Nostromo.^” said Decoud. 

“ The English call him so, but that is no name either 
for man or beast,” said the girl, passing her hand gently 
over her sister’s hair. 

“But he lets people call him so,” remarked Decoud. 

“Not in this house,” retorted the child. 

“Ah! well, I shall call him the Capataz then.” 

Decoud gave up the point, and after writing steadily ' 
for a while turned round again. 

“When do you expect him back.^” he asked. 

“After he brought you here he rode off to fetch the 
Senor Doctor from the town for mother. He will be 
back soon.” 

“He stands a good chance of getting shot somewhere 
on the road,” Decoud murmured to himself audibly; and 
Linda declared in her high-pitched voice — 

“Nobody would dare to fire a shot at Gian’ Battista.” 

“You believe that,” asked Decoud, “do you.?” 

“ I know it,” said the child, with conviction. “There 
is no one in this place brave enough to attack Gian’ 
Battista.” 

“It doesn’t require much bravery to pull a trigger 
behind a bush,” muttered Decoud to himself. “Fortu- 
nately, the night is dark, or there would be but little 
chance of saving the silver of the mine.” 

He turned again to his pocket-book, glanced back 
through the pages, and again started his pencil. 

“That was the position yesterday, after the Minerva 
with the fugitive President had gone out of harbour, and 
the rioters had been driven back into the side lanes of 
the town. I sat on the steps of the cathedral with 
Nostromo, after sending out the cable message for 
the information of a more or less attentive world. 


23S 


THE ISABELS 

I Strangely encmgh, though the offices of the Cable 
I Company are in the same building as the Porv^nir, the 
mob, which has thrown my presses out of the window 
i and scattered the type all over the Plaza, has been kept 
from interfering with the instruments on the other side 
of the courtyard. As I sat talking with Nostromo, 
Bernhardt, the telegraphist, came out from under the 
Arcades with a piece of paper in his hand. The little 
man had tied himself up to an enormous sword and 
j was hung all over with revolvers. He is ridiculous, but 
I the bravest German of his size that ever tapped the 
key of a Morse transmitter. He had received the 
message from Cayta reporting the transports with 
Barrios’s army just entering the port, and ending with 
the words, ‘The greatest enthusiasm prevails.’ I 
walked off to drink some water at the fountain, and I 
was shot at from the Alameda by somebody hiding 
behind a tree. But I drank, and didn’t care; with 
Barrios in Cayta and the great Cordillera between us 
and Montero’s victorious army I seemed, notwith- 
standing Messrs. Gamacho and Fuentes, to hold my 
new State in the hollow of my hand. I was ready to 
sleep, but when I got as far as the Casa Gould I found 
the patio full of wounded laid out on straw. Lights 
were burning, and in that enclosed courtyard on that 
hot night a faint odour of chloroform and blood hung 
about. At one end Doctor Monygham, the doctor of 
the mine, was dressing the wounds; at the other, near 
the stairs. Father Corbelan, kneeling, listened to the 
confession of a dying Cargador. Mrs. Gould was 
walking about through these shambles with a large 
bottle in one hand and a lot of cotton wool in the 
other. She just looked at me and never even winked. 
Her camerista was following her, also holding a bottle, 
and sobbing gently to herself. 


234 


NOSTROMO 


‘‘I busied myself for some time in fetching water 
from the cistern for the wounded. Afterwards I 
wandered upstairs, meeting some of the first ladies of 
Sulaco, paler than I had ever seen them before, with 
bandages over their arms. Not all of them had fled to 
the ships. A good many had taken refuge for the day 
in the Casa Gould. On the landing a girl, with her hair 
half down, was kneeling against the wall under the niche 
where stands a Madonna in blue robes and a gilt crown 
on her head. I think it was the eldest Miss Lopez; 
I couldn’t see her face, but I remember looking at the 
high French heel of her little shoe. She did not make a 
sound, she did not stir, she was not sobbing; she re- 
mained there, perfectly still, all black against the 
white wall, a silent figure of passionate piety. I am 
sure she was no more frightened than the other white- 
faced ladies I met carrying bandages. One was sitting 
on the top step tearing a piece of linen hastily into strips 
— the young wife of an elderly man of fortune here. 
She interrupted herself to wave her hand to my bow, as 
though she were in her carriage on the Alameda. The 
women of our country are worth looking at during a 
revolution. The rouge and pearl powder fall off, to- 
gether with that passive attitude towards the outer 
world which education, tradition, custom impose upon 
them from the earliest infancy. I thought of your face, 
which from your infancy had the stamp of intelligence 
instead of that patient and resigned cast which appears 
when some political commotion tears down the veil of 
cosmetics and usage. 

“In the great sala upstairs a sort of Junta of Notables 
was sitting, the remnant of the vanished Provincial 
Assembly. Don Juste Lopez had had half his beard 
singed off at the muzzle of a trabuco loaded with slugs, 
of which every one missed him, providentially. And as 


THE ISABELS 


235 


I he turned his head from side to side it was exactly 
j as if there had been two men inside his frock-coat, one 
, nobly whiskered and solemn, the other untidy and 
I scared. 

I “They raised a cry of ‘Decoud! Don Martin!’ at 
I my entrance. I asked them, ‘What are you deliberating 
upon, gentlemen?’ There did not seem to be any 
president, though Don Jose Avellanos sat at the head of 
the table. They all answered together, ‘On the preser- 
vation of life and property.’ ‘Till the new officials 
arrive,’ Don Juste explained to me, with the solemn 
• side of his face offered to my view. It was as if a 
stream of water had been poured upon my glowing idea 
of a new State. There was a hissing sound in my ears, 
and the room grew dim, as if suddenly filled with va- 
pour. 

“I walked up to the table blindly, as though I had 
been drunk. ‘You are deliberating upon surrender,’ 
I said. They all sat still, with their noses over the 
sheet of paper each had before him, God only knows 
why. Only Don Jose hid his face in his hands, mut- 
tering, ‘Never, never!’ But as I looked at him, it 
seemed to me that I could have blown him away with 
my breath, he looked so frail, so weak, so worn out. 
Whatever happens, he will not survive. The deception 
is too great for a man of his age; and hasn’t he seen the 
sheets of ‘Fifty Years of Misrule,’ which we have begun 
printing on the presses of the Porvenir, littering the 
Plaza, floating in the gutters, fired out as wads for 
trabucos loaded with handfuls of type, blown in the 
wind, trampled in the mud? I have seen pages float- 
ing upon the very waters of the harbour. It would be 
unreasonable to expect him to survive. It would be 
cruel. 

“‘Do you know,’ I cried, ‘what surrender means 


m NOSTROMO 

to you, to your women, to your children, to your 
property?’ 

“I declaimed for five minutes without drawing 
breath, it seems to me, harping on our best chances, on 
the ferocity of Montero, whom I made out to be as 
great a beast as I have no doubt he would like to be if he 
had intelligence enough to conceive a systematic reign 
of terror. And then for another five minutes or more 
I poured out an impassioned appeal to their courage 
and manliness, with all the passion of my love for ; 
Antonia. For if ever man spoke well, it would be from 
a personal feeling, denouncing an enemy, defending him- • 
self, or pleading for what really may be dearer than 
life. My dear girl, I absolutely thundered at them. It 
seemed as if my voice would burst the walls asunder, 
and when I stopped I saw all their scared eyes looking 
at me dubiously. And that was all the effect I had ' 
produced! Only Don Jose’s head had sunk lower and 
lower on his breast. I bent my ear to his withered lips, 
and made out his whisper, something like, ‘In God’s 
name, then, Martin, my son!’ I don’t know exactly. 
There was the name of God in it, I am certain. It 
seems to me I have caught his last breath — the breath 
of his departing soul on his lips. 

“He lives yet, it is true. I have seen him since; but 
it was only a senile body, lying on its back, covered to 
the chin, with open eyes, and so still that you might 
have said it was breathing no longer. I left him thus, 
with Antonia kneeling, by the side of the bed, just be- 
fore I came to this Italian’s posada, where the ubiqui- 
tous death is also waiting. But I know that Don Jose 
has really died there, in the Casa Gould, with that 
whisper urging me to attempt what no doubt his soul, 
wrapped up in the sanctity of diplomatic treaties and 
solemn declarations, must have abhorred. I had ex- 


THE ISABELS 237 

claimed very loud, ‘There is never any God in a country 
where men will not help themselves.’ 

Meanwhile, Don Juste had begun a pondered ora- 
tion whose solemn effect was spoiled by the ridiculous 
disaster to his beard. I did not wait to make it out. 
He seemed to argue that Montero’s (he called him The 
General) intentions were probably not evil, though, he 
went on, ‘that distinguished man’ (only a week ago we 
used to call him a gran' bestia) ‘was perhaps mistaken 
as to the true means.’ As you may imagine, I didn’t 
stay to hear the rest. I know the intentions of Mon- 
tero’s brother, Pedrito, the guerrillero, whom I ex- 
posed in Paris, some years ago, in a cafe frequented by 
South American students, where he tried to pass himself 
off for a Secretary of Legation. He used to come in 
and talk for hours, twisting his felt hat in his hairy 
paws, and his ambition seemed to become a sort of 
Due de Morny to a sort of Napoleon. Already, then, 
he used to talk of his brother in inflated terms. He 
seemed fairly safe from being found out, because the 
students, all of the Blanco families, did not, as you may 
imagine, frequent the Legation. It was only Decoud, 
a man without faith and principles, as they used to say, 
that went in there sometimes for the sake of the fun, as 
it were to an assembly of trained monkeys. I know his 
intentions. I have seen him change the plates at table. 
Whoever is allowed to live on in terror, I must die the 
death. 

“No, I didn’t stay to the end to hear Don Juste Lopez 
trying to persuade himself in a grave oration of the 
clemency and justice, and honesty, and purity of the 
brothers Montero. I went out abruptly to seek 
Antonia. I saw her in the gallery. As I opened the 
door, she extended to me her clasped hands. 

“‘What are they doing in there .^’ she asked. 


238 NOSTROMO 

“‘Talking,’ I said, with my eyes looking into hers. 

“‘Yes, yes, but ’ 

“‘Empty speeches,’ I interrupted her. ‘Hiding 
their fears behind imbecile hopes. They are all great 
Parliamentarians there — on the English model, as you 
know.’ I was so furious that I could hardly speak. 
She made a gesture of despair. 

“Through the door I held a little ajar behind me, we 
heard Don Juste’s measured mouthing monotone go on 
from phrase to phrase, like a sort of awful and solemn 
madness. 

“ ‘After all, the Democratic aspirations have, perhaps, 
their legitimacy. The ways of human progress are 
inscrutable, and if the fate of the country is in the hand 
of Montero, we ought ’ 

“I crashed the door to on that; it was enough; it was 
too much. There was never a beautiful face expressing 
more horror and despair than the face of Antonia. I 
couldn’t bear it; I seized her wrists. 

“‘Have they killed my father in there?’ she asked. 

“Her eyes blazed with indignation, but as I looked 
on, fascinated, the light in them went out. 

“‘It is a surrender,’ I said. And I remember I was 
shaking her wrists I held apart in my hands. ‘But it’s 
more than talk. Your father told me to go on in God’s 
name.’ 

“My dear girl, there is that in Antonia which would 
make me believe in the feasibility of anything. One 
look at her face is enough to set my brain on fire. And 
yet I love her as any other man would — with the heart, 
and with that alone. She is more to me than his Church 
to Father Corbelan (the Grand Vicar disappeared last 
night from the town; perhaps gone to join the band 
of Hernandez). She is more to me than his precious 
mine to that sentimental Englishman. I won’t speak 


THE ISABELS 


239 


of his wife. She may have been sentimental once. 
The San Tome mine stands now between those two peo- 
ple. ‘Your father himself, Antonia,’ I repeated; ‘your 
father, do you understand.^ has told me to go on.’ 

“She averted her face, and in a pained voice — 

“‘He has?’ she cried. ‘Then, indeed, I fear he will 
never speak again.’ 

“She freed her wrists from my clutch and began to 
cry in her handkerchief. I disregarded her sorrow; I 
would rather see her miserable than not see her at all, 
never any more; for whether I escaped or stayed to die, 
there was for us no coming together, no future. And 
that being so, I had no pity to waste upon the passing 
moments of her sorrow. I sent her off in tears to fetch 
Dona Emilia and Don Carlos, too. Their sentiment 
was necessary to the very life of my plan; the senti- 
mentalism of the people that will never do anything for 
the sake of their passionate desire, unless it comes to 
them clothed in the fair robes of an idea. 

“Late at night we formed a small junta of four — the 
two women, Don Carlos, and myself — in Mrs. Gould’s 
blue-and-white boudoir. 

“El Rey de Sulaco thinks himself, no doubt, a very 
honest man. And so he is, if one could look behind his 
taciturnity. Perhaps he thinks that this alone makes 
his honesty unstained. Those Englishmen live on 
illusions which somehow or other help them to get a 
firm hold of the substance. When he speaks it is by 
a rare ‘yes’ or ‘no’ that seems as impersonal as the 
words of an oracle. But he could not impose on me by 
his dumb reserve. I knew what he had in his head; he 
has his mine in his head ; and his wife had nothing in her 
head but his precious person, which he has bound up 
with the Gould Concession and tied up to that little 
woman’s neck. No matter. The thing was to make 


240 


NOSTROMO 


him present the affair to Holroyd (the Steel and Silver 
King) in such a manner as to secure his financial sup- 
port. At that time last night, just twenty -four hours 
ago, we thought the silver of the mine safe in the 
Custom House vaults till the north-bound steamer 
came to take it away. And as long as the treasure 
flowed north, without a break, that utter sentimentalist, 
Holroyd, would not drop his idea of introducing, not 
only justice, industry, peace, to the benighted con- 
tinents, but also that pet dream of his of a purer form of 
Christianity. Later on, the principal European really 
in Sulaco, the engineer-in-chief of the railway, came 
riding up the Calle, from the harbour, and was admitted , 
to our conclave. Meantime, the Junta of the Notables I 
in the great sala was still deliberating; only, one of them 
had run out in the corridor to ask the servant whether 
something to eat couldn’t be sent in. The first words 
the engineer-in-chief said as he came into the boudoir | 
were, ‘What is your house, dear Mrs. Gould A war ■ 
hospital below, and apparently a restaurant above. I 
saw them carrying trays full of good things into the 
sala.’ 

“‘And here, in this boudoir,’ I said, ‘you behold the 
inner cabinet of the Occidental Republic that is to be.’ 

“He was so preoccupied that he didn’t smile at that, 
he didn’t even look surprised. 

“He told us that he was attending to the general 
dispositions for the defence of the railway property at 
the railway yards when he was sent for to go into the 
railway telegraph office. The engineer of the railhead, 
at the foot of the mountains, wanted to talk to him from 
his end of the wire. There was nobody in the office 
but himself and the operator of the railway telegraph, 
who read off the clicks aloud as the tape coiled its 
length upon the floor. And the purport of that talk. 


241 


THE ISABELS 

I clicked nervously from a wooden shed in the depths of 
1 the forests, had informed the chief that President 
Ribiera had been, or was being, pursued. This was 
news, indeed, to all of us in Sulaco. Ribiera himself, 

I when rescued, revived, and soothed by us, had been in- 
clined to think that he had not been pursued. 

“Ribiera had yielded to the urgent solicitations of 
i his friends, and had left the headquarters of his dis- 
comfited army alone, under the guidance of Bonifacio, 
the muleteer, who had been willing to take the re- 
sponsibility with the risk. He had departed at day- 
break of the third day. His remaining forces had 
melted away during the night. Bonifacio and he rode 
hard on horses towards the Cordillera; then they ob- 
tained mules, entered the passes, and crossed the 
Paramo of Ivie just before a freezing blast swept over 
that stony plateau, burying in a drift of snow the little 
shelter-hut of stones in which they had spent the night. 
Afterwards poor Ribiera had many adventures, got 
separated from his guide, lost his mount, struggled down 
to the Campo on foot, and if he had not thrown himself 
on the mercy of a ranchero would have perished a long 
way from Sulaco. That man, who, as a matter of fact, 
recognized him at once, let him have a fresh mule, which 
the fugitive, heavy and unskilful, had ridden to death. 
And it was true he had been pursued by a party com- 
manded by no less a person than Pedro Montero, the 
I brother of the general. The cold wind of the Paramo 
luckily caught the pursuers on the top of the pass. 

! Some few men, and all the animals, perished in the icy 
I blast. The stragglers died, but the main body kept on. 
They found poor Bonifacio lying half -dead at the foot 
of a snow slope, and bayoneted him promptly in the 
true Civil War style. They would have had Ribiera, 
too, if they had not, for some reason or other, turned off 


242 


NOSTROMO 


the track of the old Camino Real, only to lose their way 
in the forests at the foot of the lower slopes. And 
there they were at last, having stumbled in unex- 
pectedly upon the construction camp. The engineer at 
the railhead told his chief by wire that he had Pedro 
Montero absolutely there, in the very office, listening 
to the clicks. He was going to take possession of Sulaco 
in the name of the Democracy. He was very overbear- 
ing. His men slaughtered some of the Railway Com- 
pany’s cattle without asking leave, and went to work 
broiling the meat on the embers. Pedrito made many 
pointed inquiries as to the silver mine, and what had 
become of the product of the last six months’ working. 
He had said peremptorily, “Ask your chief up there by 
wire, he ought to know; tell him that Don Pedro 
Montero, Chief of the Campo and Minister of the 
Interior of the new Government, desires to be correctly 
informed.’ 

“He had his feet wrapped up in blood-stained rags, a 
lean, haggard face, ragged beard and hair, and had 
walked in limping, with a crooked branch qf a tree for 
a staff. His followers were perhaps in a worse plight, 
but apparently they had not thrown away their arms, 
and, at any r-ate, not all their ammunition. Their lean 
faces filled the door and the windows of the telegraph 
hut. As it was at the same time the bedroom of the 
engineer-in-charge there, Montero had thrown himself 
on his clean blankets and lay there shivering and dic- 
tating requisitions to be transmitted by wire to Sulaco. 
He demanded a train of cars to be sent down at once to 
transport his men up. 

“‘To this I answered from my end,’ the engineer-in- 
chief related to us, ‘that I dared not risk the rolling- 
stock in the interior, as there had been attempts to 
wreck trains all along the line several times. I did that 


THE ISABELS 


243 


I foryoursake, Gould,’ said the chief engineer. ‘The answer 
j to this was, in the words of my subordinate, “The filthy 
brute on my bed said, ‘Suppose I were to have you 
I shot?”’ To which my subordinate, who, it appears, 
I was himself operating, remarked that it would not 
j bring the cars up. Upon that, the other, yawning, 
j said, “Never mind, there is no lack of horses on the 
I Campo.” And, turning over, went to sleep on Harris’s 
i bed.’ 

“ This is why, my dear girl, I am a fugitive to-night. 

I The last wire from railhead says that Pedro Montero 
I and his men left at daybreak, after feeding on asado 
I beef all night. They took all the horses; they will find 
more on the road; they’ll be here in less than thirty 
hours, and thus Sulaco is no place either for me or the 
great store of silver belonging to the Gould Concession. 

“But that is not the worst. The garrison of Esmer- 
alda has gone over to the victorious party. We have 
heard this by means of the telegraphist of the Cable 
Company, who came to the Casa Gould in the early 
morning with the news. In fact, it was so early that 
the day had not yet quite broken over Sulaco. His 
colleague in Esmeralda had called him up to say that 
the garrison, after shooting some of their officers, had 
taken possession of a Government steamer laid up in 
the harbour. It is really a heavy blow for me. I 
thought I could depend on every man in this province. 
It was a mistake. It was a Monterist Revolution in 
Esmeralda, just such as was attempted in Sulaco, only 
that that one came off. The telegraphist was signalling 
to Bernhardt all the time, and his last transmitted 
words were, ‘They are bursting in the door, and taking 
possession of the cable office. You are cut off. Can 
do no more.’ 

“But, as a matter of fact, he managed somehow to 


244 


NOSTROMO 


escape the vigilance of his captors, who had tried to 
stop the communication with the outer world. He did 
manage it. How it was done I don’t know, but a few 
hours afterwards he called up Sulaco again, and what 
he said was, ‘The insurgent army has taken possession 
of the Government transport in the bay and are filling 
her with troops, with the intention of going round the 
coast to Sulaco. Therefore look out for yourselves. 
They will be ready to start in a few hours, and may be 
upon you before daybreak.’ 

“ This is all he could say. They drove him away from 
his instrument this time for good, because Bernhardt 
has been calling up Esmeralda ever since without get- 
ting an answer.” 

After setting these words down in the pocket-book 
which he was filling up for the benefit of his sister, Decoud 
lifted his head to listen. But there were no sounds, 
neither in the room nor in the house, except the drip of 
the water from the filter into the vast earthenware jar 
under the wooden stand. And outside the house there 
was a great silence. Decoud lowered his head again 
over the pocket-book. 

“I am not running away, you understand,” he wrote 
on. “I am simply going away with that great treasure 
of silver which must be saved at all costs. Pedro 
Montero from the Campo and the revolted garrison of 
Esmeralda from the sea are converging upon it. That 
it is there lying ready for them is only an accident. The 
real objective is the San Tome mine itself, as you may 
well imagine; otherwise the Occidental Province would 
have been, no doubt, left alone for many weeks, to be 
gathered at leisure into the arms of the victorious party. 
Don Carlos Gould will have enough to do to save his 
mine, with its organization and its people; this ‘Im- 
perium in Imperio,’ this wealth -producing thing, to 


THE ISABELS 


245 


which his sentimentalism attaches a strange idea of 
justice. He holds to it as some men hold to the idea of 
love or revenge. Unless I am much mistaken in the 
man, it must remain inviolate or perish by an act of his 
will alone. A passion has crept into his cold and 
idealistic life. A passion which I can only comprehend 

I intellectually. A passion that is not like the passions 
we know, we men of another blood. But it is as 
dangerous as any of ours. 

“His wife has understood it, too. That is why she is 
! such a good ally of mine. She seizes upon all my sug- 
I gestions with a sure instinct that in the end they make 
for the safety of the Gould Concession. And he defers 
to her because he trusts her perhaps, but I fancy more 
rather as if he wished to make up for some subtle wrong, 
for that sentimental unfaithfulness which surrenders 
her happiness, her life, to the seduction of an idea. The 
little woman has discovered that he lives for the mine 
rather than for her. But let them be. To each his 
fate, shaped by passion or sentiment. The principal 
thing is that she has backed up my advice to get the 
silver out of the town, out of the country, at once, at 
any cost, at any risk. Don Carlos’ mission is to pre- 
serve unstained the fair fame of his mine; Mrs. Gould’s 
mission is to save him from the effects of that cold and 
overmastering passion, which she dreads more than if it 
were an infatuation for another woman. Nostromo’s 
mission is to save the silver. The plan is to load it into 
the largest of the Company’s lighters, and send it across 
the gulf to a small port out of Costaguana territory just 
on the other side the Azuera, where the first north- 
bound steamer will get orders to pick it up. The 
waters here are calm. We shall slip away into the dark- 
ness of the gulf before the Esmeralda rebels arrive; and 
by the time the day breaks over the ocean we shall be 


246 


NOSTROMO 


out of sight, invisible, hidden by Azuera, which itself 
looks from the Sulaco shore like a faint blue cloud on the 
horizon. 

“ The incorruptible Capataz de Cargadores is the man 
for that work; and I, the man with a passion, but with- 
out a mission, I go with him to return — to play my part 
in the farce to the end, and, if successful, to receive my 
reward, which no one but Antonia can give me. 

“I shall not see her again now before I depart. I 
left her, as I have said, by Don Jose’s bedside. The 
street was dark, the houses shut up, and I walked out 
of the town in the night. Not a single street-lamp had 
been lit for two days, and the archway of the gate was 
only a mass of darkness in the vague form of a tower, in 
which I heard low, dismal groans, that seemed to answer 
the murmurs of a man’s voice. 

“I recognized something impassive and careless in its 
tone, characteristic of that Genoese sailor who, like me, 
has come casually here to be drawn into the events for 
which his scepticism as well as mine seems to entertain 
a sort of passive contempt. The only thing he seems to 
care for, as far as I have been able to discover, is to be 
well spoken of. An ambition fit for noble souls, but 
also a profitable one for an exceptionally intelligent 
scoundrel. Yes. His very words, ‘To be well spoken 
of. Si, senor.’ He does not seem to make any dif- 
ference between speaking and thinking. Is it sheer 
naiveness or the practical point of view, I wonder? 
Exceptional individualities always interest me, because 
they are true to the general formula expressing the 
moral state of humanity. 

“He joined me on the harbour road after I had 
passed them under the dark archway without stopping. 
It was a woman in trouble he had been talking to. 
Through discretion I kept silent while he walked by my 


THE ISABELS 


247 


side. After a time he began to talk himself. It was 
not what I expected. It was only an old woman, an 
old lace-maker, in search of her son, one of the street- 
sweepers employed by the municipality. Friends had 
come the day before at daybreak to the door of their 
hovel calling him out. He had gone with them, and 
she had not seen him since; so she had left the food she 
had been preparing half-cooked on the extinct embers 
and had crawled out as far as the harbour, where she 
had heard that some town mozos had been killed on the 
morning of the riot. One of the Cargadores guarding 
the Custom House had brought out a lantern, and had 
helped her to look at the few dead left lying about there. 
Now she was creeping back, having failed in her search. 
So she sat down on the stone seat under the arch, moan- 
ing, because she was very tired. The Capataz had 
questioned her, and after hearing her broken and groan- 
ing tale had advised her to go and look amongst the 
wounded in the patio of the Casa Gould. He had also 
given her a quarter dollar, he mentioned carelessly. 

“‘Why did you do that?’ I asked. ‘Do you know 
her?’ 

“‘No, senor. I don’t suppose I have ever seen her 
before. How should I? She has not probably been 
out in the streets for years. She is one of those old 
women that you find in this country at the back of huts, 
crouching over fireplaces, with a stick on the ground by 
their side, and almost too feeble to drive away the 
stray dogs from their cooking-pots. Caramba! I 
could tell by her voice that death had forgotten her. 
But, old or young, they like money, and will speak well 
of the man who gives it to them.’ He laughed a little. 
‘Senor, you should have felt the clutch of her paw as I 
put the piece in her palm,’ He paused* ‘My last, too,’ 
he added. 


248 


NOSTROMO 


“I made no comment. He’s known for his liberality 
and his bad luck at the game of monte, which keeps him 
as poor as when he first came here. 

“ ‘I suppose, Don Martin,’ he began, in a thoughtful, 
speculative tone, ‘that the Senor Administrador of San 
Tome will reward me some day if I save his silver.^’ 

“I said that it could not be otherwise, surely. He 
walked on, muttering to himself. ‘Si, si, without doubt, 
without doubt; and, look you, Senor Martin, what it is 
to be well spoken of! There is not another man that 
could have been even thought of for such a thing. I 
shall get something great for it some day. And let it 
come soon,’ he mumbled. ‘Time passes in this country 
as quick as anywhere else.’ 

“This, soeur cherie, is my companion in the great 
escape for the sake of the great cause. He is more naive 
than shrewd, more masterful than crafty, more generous 
with his personality than the people who make use of 
him are with their money. At least, that is what he 
thinks himself with more pride than sentiment. I am 
glad I have made friends with him. Asa companion 
he acquires more importance than he ever had as a sort 
of minor genius in his way — as an original Italian sailor 
whom I allowed to come in in the small hours and talk 
familiarly to the editor of the Porvenir while the paper 
was going through the press. And it is curious to have 
met a man for whom the value of life seems to consist 
in personal prestige. 

“I am waiting for him here now. On arriving at 
the posada kept by Viola we found the children alone 
down below, and the old Genoese shouted to his 
countryman to go and fetch the doctor. Otherwise we 
would have gone on to the wharf, where it appears 
Captain Mitchell with some volunteer Europeans and a 
few picked Cargadores are loading the lighter with the 


THE ISABELS 


240 


silver that must be saved from Montero’s clutches in 
order to be used for Montero’s defeat. Nostromo 
galloped furiously back towards the town. He has 
been long gone already. This delay gives me time to 
! talk to you. By the time this pocket-book reaches 
' your hands much will have happened. But now it is a 
pause under the hovering wing of death in that silent 
house buried in the black night, with this dying woman, 
the two children crouching without a sound, and that 
[ old man whom I can hear through the thickness of the 
wall passing up and down with a light rubbing noise 
I no louder than a mouse. And I, the only other with 
them, don’t really know whether to count myself with 
the living or with the dead. 'Quien sahe?' as the people 
here are prone to say in answer to every question. But 
no! feeling for you is certainly not dead, and the whole 
thing, the house, the dark night, the silent children in 
this dim room, my very presence here — all this is life, 
must be life, since it is so much like a dream.” , 

With the writing of the last line there came upon 
Decoud a moment of sudden and complete oblivion. 
He swayed over the table as if struck by a bullet. The 
next moment he sat up, confused, with the idea that he 
had heard his pencil roll on the floor. The low door of 
the cafe, wide open, was filled with the glare of a torch in 
which was visible half of a horse, switching its tail 
against the leg of a rider with a long iron spur strapped 
to the naked heel. The two girls were gone, and 
Nostromo, standing in the middle of the room, looked 
at him from under the round brim of the sombrero low 
down over his brow. 

“I have brought that sour-faced English doctor in 
Senora Gould’s carriage,” said Nostromo. “I doubt if, 
with all his wisdom, he can save the Padrona this time. 
They have sent for the children. A bad sign that.” 


250 


NOSTROMO 


I 


He sat down on the end of a bench. ‘‘She wants to, 
give them her blessing, I suppose.’’ 

Dazedly Decoud observed that he must have fallen 
sound asleep, and Nostromo said, with a vague smile, 
that he had looked in at the window and had seen him 
lying still across the table with his head on his arms. 
The English senora had also come in the carriage, and 
went upstairs at once with the doctor. She had told 
him not to wake up Don Martin yet; but when they senti 
for the children he had come into the cafe. 

The half of the horse with its half of the rider swungf| 
round outside the door; the torch of tow and resin in the; 
iron basket which was carried on a stick at the saddle-i 
bow flared right into the room for a moment, and Mrs. 
Gould entered hastily with a very white, tired face. 
The hood of her dark, blue cloak had fallen back. Both 
men rose. 

“Teresa wants to see you, Nostromo,” she said. 

The Capataz did not move. Decoud, with his back 
to the table, began to button up his coat. 

“The silver, Mrs. Gould, the silver,” he murmured in 
English. “Don’t forget that the Esmeralda garrison 
have got a steamer. They may appear at any moment 
at the harbour entrance.” 

“The doctor says there is no hope,” Mrs. Gould spoke 
rapidly, also in English. “I shall take you down to the 
wharf in my carriage and then come back to fetch away 
the girls.” She changed swiftly into Spanish to address 
Nostromo. “Why are you wasting time? Old Gior- 
gio’s wife wishes to see you.” 

“I am going to her, senora,” muttered the Capataz. 

Dr. Monygham now showed himself, bringing back 
the children. To Mrs. Gould’s inquiring glance he only 
shook his head and went outside at once, followed by 
Nostromo. 


THE ISABELS 


251 


The horse of the torch-bearer, motionless, hung his 
head low, and the rider had dropped the reins to light 
a cigarette. The glare of the torch played on the front 
of the house crossed by the big black letters of its in- 
scription in which only the word Italia was lighted 
fully. The patch of wavering glare reached as far as 
Mrs. Gould’s carriage waiting on the road, with the 
yellow-faced, portly Ignacio apparently dozing on the 
box. By his side Basilio, dark and skinny, held a 
Winchester carbine in fronf of him, with both hands, 
and peered fearfully into the darkness. Nostromo 
touched lightly the doctor’s shoulder. 

“Is she really dying, senor doctor.^” 

“Yes,” said the doctor, with a strange twitch of his 
scarred cheek. “And why she wants to see you I can- 
not imagine.” 

“She has been like that before,” suggested Nostromo, 
looking away. 

“Well, Capataz, I can assure you she will never be 
like that again,” snarled Dr. Monygham. “You may 
go to her or stay away. There is very little to be got 
from talking to the dying. But she told Dona Emilia 
in my hearing that she has been like a mother to you 
ever since you first set foot ashore here.” 

“Si! And she never had a good word to say for me 
to anybody. It is more as if she could not forgive me 
for being alive, and such a man, too, as she would have 
liked her son to be.” 

“Maybe!” exclaimed a mournful deep voice near 
them. “Women have their own ways of tormenting 
themselves.” Giorgio Viola had come out of the house. 
He threw a heavy black shadow in the torchlight, and 
the glare fell on his big face, on the great bushy head of 
white hair. He motioned the Capataz indoors with 
his extended arm. 


253 


NOSTROMO 


Dr. Monygham, after busying himsetf with a little 
medicament box of polished wood on the seat of the 
landau, turned to old Giorgio and thrust into his big, 
trembling hand one of the glass-stoppered bottles out 
of the case. 

“Give her a spoonful of this now and then, in water,” 
he said. “It will make her easier.” 

“And there Is nothing more for her.^” asked the old 
man, patiently. 

“No. Not on earth,” said the doctor, with his back 
to him, clicking the lock of the medicine case. 

Nostromo slowly crossed the large kitchen, all dark 
but for the glow of a heap of charcoal under the heavy 
mantel of the cooking-range, where water was boiling in 
an iron pot with a loud bubbling sound. Between the 
two walls of a narrow staircase a bright light streamed 
from the sick-room above; and the magnificent Capataz 
de Cargadores stepping noiselessly in soft leather 
sandals, bushy whiskered, his muscular neck and 
bronzed chest bare in the open check shirt, resembled 
a Mediterranean sailor just come ashore from some 
wine or fruit-laden felucca. At the top he paused, 
broad shouldered, narrow hipped and supple, looking 
at the large bed, like a white couch of state, with a 
profusion of snowy linen, amongst which the Padrona 
sat unpropped and bowed, her handsome, black-browed 
face bent over her chest. A mass of raven hair with 
only a few white threads in it covered her shoulders; 
one thick strand fallen forward half veiled her cheek. 
Perfectly motionless in that pose, expressing physical 
anxiety and unrest, she turned her eyes alone towards 
Nostromo. 

The Capataz had a red sash wound many times round 
his waist, and a heavy silver ring on the forefinger of the 
hand he raised to give a twist to his moustache. 


THE ISABELS 258 

“Their revolutions, their revolutions,” gasped Seiiora 
Teresa. Look, Gian’ Battista, it has killed me at 
last!” 

Nostromo said nothing, and the sick woman with an 
upward glance insisted. “Look, this one has killed 
me, while you were away fighting for what did not 
concern you, foolish man.” 

“Why talk like this?” mumbled the Capataz between 
his teeth. “Will you never believe in my good sense? 
It concerns me to keep on being what I am: every day 
alike.” 

“You never change, indeed,” she said, bitterly. “Al- 
ways thinking of yourself and taking your pay out in 
fine words from those who care nothing for you.” 

There was between them an intimacy of antagonism 
as close in its way as the intimacy of accord and af- 
fection. He had not walked along the way of Teresa’s 
expectations. It was she who had encouraged him to 
leave his ship, in the hope of securing a friend and de- 
fender for the girls. The wife of old Giorgio was aware 
of her precarious health, and was haunted by the fear 
of her aged husband’s loneliness and the unprotected 
state of the children. She had wanted to annex that ap- 
parently quiet and steady young man, affectionate and 
pliable, an orphan from his tenderest age, as he had 
told her, with no ties in Italy except an uncle, owner 
and master of a felucca, from whose ill-usage he had 
run away before he was fourteen. He had seemed to 
her courageous, a hard worker, determined to make his 
way in the world. From gratitude and the ties of 
habit he would become like a son to herself and Giorgio; 
and then, who knows, when Linda had grown up. . . . 
Ten years’ difference between husband and wife was not 
so much. Her own great man was nearly twenty years 
older than herself. Gian’ Battista was an attractive 


254 


NOSTROMO 


young fellow, besides; attractive to men, women, and 
children, just by that profound quietness of personality 
which, like a serene twilight, rendered more seductive 
the promise of his vigorous form and the resolution of 
his conduct. 

Old Giorgio, in profound ignorance of his wife’s views 
and hopes, had a great regard for his young countryman. 
“A man ought not to be tame,” he used to tell her, , 
quoting the Spanish proverb in defence of the splendid 1 
Capataz. She was growing jealous of his success. He i 
was escaping from her, she feared. She was practical, 
and he seemed to her to be an absurd spendthrift I 
of these qualities which made him so valuable. He got | 
too little for them. He scattered them with both 
hands amongst too many people, she thought. He laid 
no money by. She railed at his poverty, his exploits, 
his adventures, his loves and his reputation; but in her 
heart she had never given him up, as though, indeed, he 
had been her son. 

Even now, ill as she was, ill enough to feel the chill, 
black breath of the approaching end, she had wished to 
see him. It was like putting out her benumbed hand to 
regain her hold. But she had presumed too much on 
her strength. She could not command her thoughts; 
they had become dim, like her vision. The words fal- 
tered on her lips, and only the paramount anxiety and 
desire of her life seemed to be too strong for death. 

The Capataz said, “I haVe heard these things many 
times. You are unjust, but it does not hurt me. Only 
now you do not seem to have much strength to talk, and 
I have but little time to listen. I am engaged in a work 
of very great moment.” 

She made an effort to ask him whether it was true that 
he had found time to go and fetch a doctor for her. 
Nostromo nodded affirmatively. 


THE ISABELS 


255 


! 


She was pleased: it relieved her sufferings to know 
that the man had condescended to do so much for those 
who really wanted his help. It was a proof of his 
friendship. Her voice become stronger. 

“I want a priest more than a doctor,” she said, 
pathetically. She did not move her head; only her 
eyes ran into the corners to watch the Capataz 
standing by the side of her bed. “Would you go to 
fetch a priest for me now.^ Think! A dying woman 
asks you!” 

Nostromo shook his head resolutely. He did not 
believe in priests in their sacerdotal character. A 
doctor was an efficacious person; but a priest, as priest, 
was nothing, incapable of doing either good or harm. 
Nostromo did not even dislike the sight of them as old 
Giorgio did. The utter uselessness of the errand was 
what struck him most. 

“Padrona,” he said, “y^^ have been like this before, 
and got better after a few days. I have given you 
already the very last moments I can spare. Ask 
Senora Gould to send you one.” 

He was feeling uneasy at the impiety of this refusal. 
The Padrona believed in priests, and confessed herself 
to them. But all women did that. It could not be of 
much consequence. And yet his heart felt oppressed 
for a moment — at the thought what absolution would 
mean to her if she believed in it only ever so little. No 
matter. It was quite true that he had given her already 
the very last moment he could spare. 

“You refuse to go?” she gasped. “Ah! you are 
always yourself, indeed.” 

“Listen to reason, Padrona,” he said. “I am needed 
to save the silver of the mine. Do you hear? A 
greater treasure than the one which they say is guarded 
by ghosts and devils in Azuera. It is true. I am re- 


/ 


256 


NOSTROMO 


solved to make this the most desperate affair I was 
ever engaged on in my whole life.” 

She felt a despairing indignation. The supreme test 
had failed. Standing above her, Nostromo did not 
see the distorted features of her face, distorted by a 
paroxysm of pain and anger. Only she began to 
tremble all over. Her bowed head shook. The broad 
shoulders quivered. 

“Then God, perhaps, will have mercy upon me! 
But do you look to it, man, that you get something for 
yourself out of it, besides the remorse that shall over- 
take you some day.” ^ 

She laughed feebly. “Get riches at least for once, j 
you indispensable, admired Gian’ Battista, to whom : 
the peace of a dying woman is less than the praise of 
people who have given you a silly name — and nothing i 
besides — in exchange for your soul and body.” 

The Capataz de Cargadores swore to himself under 
his breath. 

“Leave my soul alone, Padrona, and I shall know 
how to take care of my body. Where is the harm of 
people having need of me.^ What are you envying me 
that I have robbed you and the children of? Those 
very people you are throwing in my teeth have done 
more for old Giorgio than they ever thought of doing 
for me.” 

He struck his breast with his open palm; his 
voice had remained low though he had spoken in a 
forcible tone. He twisted his moustaches one after 
another, and his eyes wandered a little about the 
room. 

“Is it my fault that I am the only man for their pur- 
poses? What angry nonsense are you talking, mother? 
Would you rather have me timid and foolish, selling 
water-melons on the market-place or rowing a boat for 


THE ISABELS 


257 


passengers along the harbour, like a soft Neapolitan with- 
out courage or reputation? Would you have a young 
man live like a monk? I do not believe it. Would you 
want a monk for your eldest girl? Let her grow. What 
are you afraid of? You have been angry with me for 
everything I did for years; ever since you first spoke to 
me, in secret from old Giorgio, about your Linda. Hus- 
band to one and brother to the other, did you say? 
Well, why not! I like the little ones, and a man must 
marry some time. But ever since that time you have 
been making little of me to everyone. Why? Did you 
think you could put a collar and chain on me as if I were 
one of the watch-dogs they keep over there in the rail- 
way yards? Look here, Padrona, I am the same man 
who came ashore one evening and sat down in the 
thatched ranche you lived in at that time on the other 
side of the town and told you all about himself. You 
were not unjust to me then. What has happened since? 
I am no longer an insignificant youth. A good name, 
Giorgio says, is a treasure, Padrona.” 

“They have turned your head with their praises,” 
gasped the sick woman. “They have been paying you 
with words. Your folly shall betray you into poverty, 
misery, starvation. The very leperos shall laugh at 
you — the great Capataz.” 

Nostromo stood for a time as if struck dumb. She 
never looked at him. A self-confident, mirthless smile 
passed quickly from his lips, and then he backed away. 
His disregarded figure sank down beyond the doorway. 
He descended the stairs backwards, with the usual sense 
of having been somehow baffled by this woman’s dis- 
paragement of this reputation he had obtained and 
desired to keep. 

Downstairs in the big kitchen a candle was burning, 
surrounded by the shadows of the walls, of the ceiling, 


258 


NOSTROMO 


but no ruddy glare filled the open square of the outer 
door. The carriage with Mrs. Gould and Don Martin, 
preceded by the horseman bearing the torch, had gone 
on to the jetty. Dr. Monygham, who had remained, 
sat on the corner of a hard wood table near the candle- 
stick, his seamed, shaven face inclined sideways, his 
arms crossed on his breast, his lips pursed up, and his 
prominent eyes glaring stonily upon the floor of black 
earth. Near the overhanging mantel of the fireplace, 
where the pot of water was still boiling violently, old * 
Giorgio held his chin in his hand, one foot advanced, as 
if arrested by a sudden thought. 

''AdioSy viejo/' said Nostromo, feeling the handle of 
his revolver in the belt and loosening his knife in its 
sheath. He picked up a blue poncho lined' with red 
from the table, and put it over his head. “Adios, look 
after the things in my sleeping-room, and if you hear 
from me no more, give up the box to Paquita. There 
is not much of value there, except my new serape from 
Mexico, and a few silver buttons on my best jacket. 
No matter! The things will look well enough on the 
next lover she gets, and the man need not be afraid I 
shall linger on earth after I am dead, like those Gringos 
that haunt the Azuera.” 

Dr. Monygham twisted his lips into a bitter smile. : 
After old Giorgio, with an almost imperceptible nod and i 
without a word, had gone up the narrow stairs, he 
said — 

“Why, Capataz! I thought you could never fail in 
anything.” 

Nostromo, glancing contemptuously at the doctor, 
lingered in the doorway rolling a cigarette, then struck a 
match, and, after lighting it, held the burning piece of 
wood above his head till the flame nearly touched his 
fingers. 


THE ISABELS 


S59 


‘‘No wind!” he muttered to himself. “Look here, 
senor — do you know the nature of my undertaking.?” 

Dr. Monygham nodded sourly. 

“It is as if I were taking up a curse upon me, senor 
doctor. A man with a treasure on this coast will have 
every knife raised against him in every place upon the 
shore. You see that, senor doctor.? I shall float 
along with a spell upon my life till I meet somewhere the 
north-bound steamer of the Company, and then indeed 
they will talk about the Capataz of the Sulaco Carga- 
dores from one end of America to another.” 

Dr. Monygham laughed his short, throaty laugh. 
Nostromo turned round in the doorway. 

“But if your worship can find any other man ready 
and fit for such business I will stand back. I am not 
exactly tired of my life, though I am so poor that I can 
carry all I have with myself on my horse’s back.” 

“You gamble too much, and never say ‘no’ to a pretty 
face, Capataz,” said Dr. Monygham, with sly sim- 
plicity. “ That’s not the way to make a fortune. But 
nobody that I know ever suspected you of being poor. 
I hope you have made a good bargain in case you come 
back safe from this adventure.” 

“What bargain would your worship have made.?” 
asked Nostromo, blowing the smoke out of his lips 
through the doorway. 

Dr. Monygham listened up the staircase for a mo- 
ment before he answered, with another of his short, 
abrupt laughs — 

“Illustrious Capataz, for taking the curse of death 
upon my back, as you call it, nothing else but the whole 
treasure would do.” 

Nostromo vanished out of the doorway with a grunt 
of discontent at this jeering answer. Dr. Monygham 
heard him gallop away. Nostromo rode furiously in 


^60 


NOSTROMO 


the dark. There were lights in the buildings of the 
O.S.N. Company near the wharf, but before he got 
there he met the Gould carriage. The horseman pre- 
ceded it with the torch, whose light showed the white 
mules trotting, the portly Ignacio driving, and Basilio 
with the carbine on the box. From the dark body of 
the landau Mrs. Gould’s voice cried, ‘‘They are waiting 
for you, Capataz!” She was returning, chilly and ex- 
cited, with Decoud’s pocket-book still held in her hand. 
He had confided it to her to send to his sister. “Per- 
haps my last words to her,” he had said, pressing Mrs. 
Gould’s hand. 

The Capataz never checked his speed. At the head 
of the wharf vague figures with rifles leapt to the head of 
his horse; others closed upon him — cargadores of the 
company posted by Captain Mitchell on the watch. At 
a word from him they fell back with subservient mur- 
murs, recognizing his voice. At the other end of the 
jetty, near a cargo crane, in a dark group with glowing 
cigars, his name was pronounced in a tone of relief. 
Most of the Europeans in Sulaco were there, rallied 
round Charles Gould, as if the silver of the mine had 
been the emblem of a common cause, the symbol of the 
supreme importance of material interests. They had 
loaded it into the lighter with their own hands. Nos- 
tromo recognized Don Carlos Gould, a thin, tall shape, 
standing a little apart and silent, to whom another tall 
shape, the engineer-in-chief, said aloud, “If it must be 
lost, it is a million times better that it should go to the ’ 
bottom of the sea.” ‘ 

Martin Decoud called out from the lighter, “Au 
reyoir, messieurs, till we clasp hands again over the 
new-born Occidental Republic.” Only a subdued mur- 
mur responded to his clear, ringing tones; and then it ‘ 
seemed to him that the wharf was floating away into the 


THE ISABELS 


261 


night; but it was Nostromo, who was already pushing 
against a pile with one of the heavy sweeps. Decoud 
did not move; the effect was that of being launched into 
space. After a splash or two there was not a sound but 
the thud of Nostromo’s feet leaping about the boat. 
He hoisted the big sail; a breath of wind fanned 
Decoud’s cheek. Everything had vanished but the light 
of the lantern Captain Mitchell had hoisted upon the 
post at the end of the jetty to guide Nostromo out of 
the harbour. 

The two men, unable to see each other, kept silent till 
the lighter, slipping before the fitful breeze, passed out 
between almost invisible headlands into the still deeper 
darkness of the gulf. For a time the lantern on the 
jetty shone after them. The wind failed, then fanned 
up again, but so faintly that the big, half-decked boat 
slipped along with no more noise than if she had been 
suspended in the air. 

“We are out in the gulf now,” said the calm voice of 
Nostromo. A moment after he added, “Senor Mitchell 
has lowered the light.” 

“Yes,” said Decoud; “nobody can find us now.” 

A great recrudescence of obscurity embraced the 
boat. The sea in the gulf was as black as the clouds 
above.' Nostromo, after striking a couple of matches 
to get a glimpse of the boat-compass he had with 
him in the lighter, steered by the feel of the wind on his 
cheek. 

It was a new experience for Decoud, this mysterious- 
ness of the great waters spread out strangely smooth, as 
if their restlessness had been crushed by the weight of 
that dense night. The Placido was sleeping profoundly 
under its black poncho. 

The main thing now for success was to get away from 
the coast and gain the middle of the gulf before day 


262 


NOSTROMO 


broke. The Isabels were somewhere at hand. ‘‘On 
your left as you look forward, sefior,” said Nostromo, 
suddenly. When his voice ceased, the enormous still- 
ness, without light or sound, seemed to affect Decoud’s 
senses like a powerful drug. He didn’t even know at 
times whether he were asleep or awake. Like a man 
lost in slumber, he heard nothing, he saw nothing. 
Even his hand held before his face did not exist for his 
eyes. The change from the agitation, the passions and 
the dangers, from the sights and sounds of the shore, 
was so complete that it would have resembled death 
had it not been for the survival of his thoughts. In this 
foretaste of eternal peace they floated vivid and light, 
like unearthly clear dreams of earthly things that may 
haunt the souls freed by death from the misty at- 
mosphere of regrets and hopes. Decoud shook himself, 
shuddered a bit, though the air that drifted past him 
was warm. He had the strangest sensation of his soul 
having just returned into his body from the circumam- 
bient darkness in which land, sea, sky, the mountains, 
and the rocks were as if they had not been. 

Nostromo’s voice was speaking, though he, at the 
tiller, was also as if he were not. “Have you been 
asleep, Don Martin? Caramhal If it were possible I 
would think that I, too, have dozed off. I have a 
strange notion somehow of having dreamt that there 
was a sound of blubbering, a sound a sorrowing man 
could make, somewhere near this boat. Something 
between a sigh and a sob.” 

“Strange!” muttered Decoud, stretched upon the 
pile of treasure boxes covered by many tarpaulins. 
“Could it be that there is another boat near us in the 
gulf? We could not see it, you know.” 

Nostromo laughed a little at the absurdity of the idea. 
They dismissed it from their minds. The solitude 


THE ISABELS 


263 


could almost be felt. And when the breeze ceased, the 
blackness seemed to weigh upon Decoud like a stone. 

‘‘This is overpowering,” he muttered. “Do we 
move at all, Capataz.^” 

“Not so fast as a crawling beetle tangled in the 
grass,” answered Nostromo, and his voice seemed 
deadened by the thick veil of obscurity that felt 
warm and hopeless all about them. There were long 
periods when he made no sound, invisible and inaudible 
as if he had mysteriously stepped out of the lighter. 

In the featureless night Nostromo was not even cer- 
tain which way the lighter headed after the wind had 
completely died out. He peered for the islands. There 
was not a hint of them to be seen, as if they had sunk to 
the bottom of the gulf. He threw himself down by the 
side of Decoud at last, and whispered into his ear that 
if daylight caught them near the Sulaco shore through 
want of wind, it would be possible to sweep the lighter 
behind the cliff at the high end of the Great Isabel, 
where she would lie concealed. Decoud was surprised 
at the grimness of his anxiety. To him the removal 
of the treasure was a political move, it was necessary 
for several reasons that it should not fall into the hands 
of Montero, but here was a man who took another 
view of this enterprise. The Caballeros over there did 
not seem to have the slightest idea of what they had 
given him to do. Nostromo, as if affected by the gloom 
around, seemed nervously resentful. ^ Decoud was 
surprised. The Capataz, indifferent to those dangers 
that seemed obvious to his companion, allowed himself 
to become scornfully exasperate^ by the deadly nature 
of the trust put, as a matter of course, into his hands. 
It was more dangerous, Nostromo said, with a laugh 
and a curse, than sending a nian to get the treasure 
that people said was guarded by devils and ghosts in the 


264 


NOSTROMO 


deep mvines of Azuera. “Senor,” he said, “we must 
catch the steamer at sea. We must keep out in the 
open looking for her till we have eaten and drunk all 
that has been put on board here. And if we miss her by 
some mischance, we must keep away from the land till 
we grow weak, and perhaps mad, and die, and drift 
dead, until one or another of the steamers of the 
Compania comes upon the boat with the two dead men 
who have saved the treasure. That, senor, is the only 
way to save it; for, don’t you see.^ for us to come to the 
land anywhere in a hundred miles along this coast with 
this silver in our possession is to run the naked breast 
against the point of a knife. This thing has been given 
to me like a deadly disease. If men discover it I am 
dead, and you, too, senor, since you would come with 
me. There is enough silver to make a whole province 
rich, let alone a seaboard pueblo inhabited by thieves 
and vagabonds. Senor, they would think that heaven 
itself sent these riches into their hands, and would cut 
our throats without hesitation. I would trust no fair 
words from th^ best man around the shores of this wild 
gulf. Reflect that, even by giving up the treasure at 
the first demand, we would not be able to save our lives. 
Do you understand this, or must I explain.'^” • 

“No, you needn’t explain,” said Decoud, a little 
listlessly. “I can see it well enough myself, that the 
possession of this treasure is very much like a deadly 
disease for men situated as we are. But it had to be re- 
moved from Sulaco, and you were the man for the task.” 

“I was; but 1 cannot believe,” said Nostromo, “that 
its loss would have impoverished Don Carlos Gould 
very much. There is more wealth in the mountain. I 
have heard it rolling down the shoots on quiet nights 
when I used to ride to Rincon to see a certain girl, 
after my work at the harbour was done. For years 


THE ISABELS 


265 


the rich rocks have been pouring down with a noise like 
thunder, and the miners say that there is enough at the 
heart of the mountain to thunder on for years and years 
to come. And yet, the day before yesterday, we have 
been fighting to save it from the mob, and to-night I 
am sent out with it into this darkness, where there is 
no wind to get away with; as if it were the last lot of 
silver on earth to get bread for the hungry with. Ha! 
ha! Well, I am going to make it the most famous and 
desperate affair of my life — wind or no wind. It shall 
be talked about when the little children are grown up 
and the grown men are old. Aha! the Monterists must 
not get hold of it, I am told, whatever happens to Nos- 
tromo the Capataz; and they shall not have it, I tell 
you, since it has been tied for safety round Nostromo’s 
neck.” 

“I see it,” murmured Decoud. He saw, indeed, that 
his companion had his own peculiar view of this enter- 
prise. 

Nostromo interrupted his reflections upon the way 
men’s qualities are made use of, without any fun- 
damental knowledge of their nature, by the proposal 
they should slip the long oars out and sweep the 
lighter in the direction of the Isabels. It wouldn’t 
do for daylight to reveal the treasure floating within a 
mile or so of the harbour entrance. The denser the 
darkness generally, the smarter were the puffs of wind 
on which he had reckoned to make his way; but to- 
night the gulf, under its poncho of clouds, remained 
breathless, as if dead rather than asleep. 

Don Martin’s soft hands suffered cruelly, tugging 
at the thick handle of the enormous oar. He stuck 
to it manfully, setting his teeth. He, too, was in the 
toils of an imaginative existence, and that strange work 
of pulling a lighter seemed to belong naturally to the 


266 


NOSTROMO 


inception of a new state, acquired an ideal meaning 
from his love for Antonia. For all their efforts, the i 
heavily laden lighter hardly moved. Nostromo could 
be heard swearing to himself between the regular 
splashes of the sweeps. “We are making a crooked 
path,’’ he muttered to himself. “I wish I could see the 
islands.” 

In his unskilfulness Don Martin over-exerted himself. 
Now and then a sort of muscular faintness would run 
from the tips of his aching fingers through every fibre 
of his body, and pass off in a flush of heat. He had 
fought, talked, suffered mentally and physically, 
exerting his mind and body for the last forty-eight hours 
without intermission. He had had no rest, very little 
food, no pause in the stress of his thoughts and his 
feelings. Even his love for Antonia, whence he drew 
his strength and his inspiration, had reached the point 
of tragic tension during their hurried interview by Don 
Jose’s bedside. And now, suddenly, he was thrown 
out of all this into a dark gulf, whose very gloom, si- 
lence, and breathless peace added a torment to the 
necessity for physical exertion. He imagined the ' 
lighter sinking to the bottom with an extraordinary 
shudder of delight. “I am on the verge of delirium,” 
he thought. He mastered the trembling of all his 
limbs, of his breast, the inward trembling of all his 
body exhausted of its nervous force. 

“Shall we rest, Capataz.?” he proposed in a careless 
tone. “There are many hours of night yet before us.” 

“True. It is but a mile or so, I suppose. Rest your 
arms, senor, if that is what you mean. You will find 
no other sort of rest, I can promise you, since you let 
yourself be bound to this treasure whose loss would 
make no poor man poorer. No, senor; there is no rest 
till we find a north-bound steamer, or else some ship 


THE ISABELS 


267 


finds us drifting about stretched out dead upon the 
Englishman’s silver. Or rather — no\'porDios! I shall 
cut down the gunwale with the axe right to the water’s 
edge before thirst and hunger rob me of my strength. 
By all the saints and devils I shall let the sea have the 
treasure rather than give it up to any stranger. Since 
it was the good pleasure of the Caballeros to send me off 
on such an errand, they shall learn I am just the man 
they take me for.” 

Decoud lay on the silver boxes panting. All his 
active sensations and feelings from as far back as he 
could remember seemed to him the maddest of dreams. 
Even his passionate devotion to Antonia into which he 
had worked himself up out of the depths of his scepti- 
cism had lost all appearance of reality. For a moment 
he was the prey of an extremely languid but not un- 
pleasant indifference. 

‘T am sure they didn’t mean you to take such a 
desperate view of this affair,” he said. 

“ What was it, then.^^ A joke.^ ” snarled the man, who 
on the pay-sheets of the O.S.N. Company’s estab- 
lishment in Sulaco was described as “Foreman of the 
wharf” against the figure of his wages. “Was it for a 
joke they woke me up from my sleep after two days of 
street fighting to make me stake my life upon a bad 
card.? Everybody knows, too, that I am not a lucky 
gambler.” 

“Yes, everybody knows of your good luck with 
women, Capataz,” Decoud propitiated his companion 
in a weary drawl. 

“Look here, sen or,” Nostromo went on. “I never 
even remonstrated about this affair. Directly I heard 
what was wanted I saw what a desperate affair it must 
be, and I made up my mind to see it out. Every 
minute was of importance. I had to wait for you first. 


268 


NOSTROMO 


Then, when we arrived at the Italia Una, old Giorgio 
shouted to me to go for the English doctor. Later on, ! 
that poor dying woman wanted to see me, as you know. 
Senor, I was reluctant to go. I felt already this cursed 
silver growing heavy upon my back, and I was afraid 
that, knowing herself to be dying, she would ask me to 
ride off again for a priest. Father Corbelan, who is 
fearless, would have come at a word; but Father Cor- 
belan is far a^ay, safe with the band of Her- 
nandez, and the populace, that would have liked to 
tear him to pieces, are much incensed against the 
priests. Not a single fat padre would have consented 
to put his head out of his hiding-place to-night to save a 
Christian soul, except, perhaps, under my protection. 
That was in her mind. I pretended I did not believe 
she was going to die. Senor, I refused to fetch a priest 
for a dying woman . . 

Decoud was heard to stir. 

“You did, Capatazl” he exclaimed. His tone 
changed. “Well^ you know — it was rather fine.” 

“ You do not believe in priests, Don Martin.?^ Neither 
do I. What was the use of wasting time.^ But she — 
she believes in them. The thing sticks in my throat. 
She may be dead already, and here we are floating help- 
less with no wind at all. Curse on all superstition. ‘ 
She died thinking I deprived her of Paradise, I suppose. 
It shall be the most desperate affair of my life.” 

Decoud remained lost in reflection. He tried to V 
analyze the sensation^ awaked by what he had been i 
told. The voice of the Capataz was heard again: 

“Now, Don Martin, let us take up the sweeps and try 
to find the Isabels. It is either that or sinking the 
lighter if the day overtakes us. We must not forget 
that the steamer from Esmeralda with the soldiers may 
be coming along. We will pull straight on now. I have 


THE ISABELS 269 

discovered a bit of a candle here, and we must take the 
risk of a small light to make a course by the boat com- 
pass. There is not enough wind to blow it out — may 
the curse of Heaven fall upon this blind gulf!” 

A small flame appeared burning quite straight. It 
showed fragmentarily the stout ribs and planking in the 
hollow, empty part of the lighter. Decoud could see 
Nostromo standing up to pull. He saw him as high as 
the red sash on his waist, with a gleam of a white- 
handled revolver and the wooden haft of a long knife 
protruding on his left side. Decoud nerved himself for 
the effort of rowing. Certainly there was not enough 
wind to blow the candle out, but its flame swayed a 
little to the slow movement of the heavy boat. It was 
so big that with their utmost efforts they could not 
move it quicker than about a mile an hour. This was 
sufficient, however, to sweep them amongst the Isabels 
long before daylight came. There was a good six hours 
of darkness before them, and the distance from the 
harbour to the Great Isabel did not exceed two miles. 
Decoud put this heavy toil to the account of the 
Capataz’s impatience. Sometimes they paused, and 
then strained their ears to hear the boat from Es- 
meralda. In this perfect quietness a s.teamer moving 
would have been heard from far off. As to seeing any- 
thing it was out of the question. They could not see 
each other. Even the lighter’s sail, which remained 
set, was invisible. Very often they rested. 

‘‘Caramba!” said Nostromo, suddenly, during one of 
those intervals when they lolled idly against the heavy 
handles of the sweeps. “What is it? Are you dis- 
tressed, Don Martin?” 

Decoud assured him that he was not distressed in the 
least. Nostromo for a time kept perfectly still, and 
then in a whisper invited Martin to come aft. 


270 


•NOSTROMO 


With lips touching Decoud’s ear he declared his belief 
that there was somebody else besides themselves upon 
the lighter. Twice now he had heard the sound of 
stifled sobbing. 

“Senor,” he whispered with awed wonder, “I am 
certain that there is somebody weeping in this lighter.” 

Decoud had heard nothing. He expressed his in- 
credulity. However, it was easy to ascertain the truth 
of the matter. 

“It is most amazing,” muttered Nostromo. “Could 
anybody have concealed himself on board while the 
lighter was lying alongside the wharf 

“And you say it was like sobbing asked Decoud, 
lowering his voice, too. “If he is weeping, whoever he 
is he cannot be very dangerous.” 

Clambering over the precious pile in the middle, they 
crouched low on the foreside of the mast and groped 
under the half-deck. Right forward, in the narrowest 
part, their hands came upon the limbs of a man, who 
remained as silent as death. Too startled themselves 
to make a sound, they dragged him aft by one arm and 
the collar of his coat. He was limp — lifeless. 

The light of the bit of candle fell upon a round, 
hook-nosed fac^ with black moustaches and little side- 
whiskers. He was extremely dirty. A greasy growth of 
beard was sprouting on the shaven parts of the cheeks. 
The thick lips were slightly parted, but the eyes re- 
mained closed. Decoud, to his immense astonishment, 
recognized Senor Hirsch, the hide merchant from 
Esmeralda. Nostromo, too, had recognized him. And 
they gazed at each other across the body, lying with its 
naked feet higher than its head, in an absurd pretence of 
sleep, faintness, or death. 


CHAPTER EIGHT 


For a moment, before this extraordinary find, they 
forgot their own concerns and sensations. Senor 
Hirsch’s sensations as he lay there must have been those 
of extreme terror. For a long time he refused to give a 
sign of life, till at last Decoud’s objurgations, and, per- 
haps more, Nostromo’s impatient suggestion that he 
should be thrown overboard, as he seemed to be dead, 
induced him to raise one eyelid first, and then the other. 

It appeared that he had never found a safe oppor- 
tunity to leave Sulaco. He lodged with Anzani, the 
universal storekeeper, on the Plaza Mayor! But when 
the riot broke out he had made his escape from his 
host’s house before daylight, and in such a hurry that 
he had forgotten to put on his shoes. He had run out 
impulsively in his socks, and with his hat in his hand, 
into the garden of Anzani’s house. Fear gave him the 
necessary agility to climb over several low walls, and 
afterwards he blundered into the overgrown cloisters of 
the ruined Franciscan convent in one of the by-streets. 
He forced himself into the midst of matted bushes with 
the recklessness of desperation, and this accounted for 
his scratched body and his torn clothing. He lay hid- 
den there all day, his tongue cleaving to the roof of his 
mouth with all the intensity of thirst engendered by 
heat and fear. Three times different bands of men in- 
vaded the place with shouts and imprecations, looking 
for Father Corbelan ; but towards the evening, still lying 
on his face in the bushes, he thought he would die from 
the fear of silence. He was not very clear as to what 
271 


^72 


. NOSTROMO 


had induced him to leave the place, but evidently he had | 
got out and slunk successfully out of town along the * 
deserted back lanes. He wandered in the darkness near 
the railway, so maddened by apprehension that he dared 
not even approach the fires of the pickets of Italian 
workmen guarding the line. He had a vague idea 
evidently of finding refuge in the railway yards, but the 
dogs rushed upon him, barking; men began to shout; 
a shot was fired at random. He fled away from the 
gates. By the merest accident, as it happened, he 
took the direction of the O.S.N. Company’s offices. 
Twice he stumbled upon the bodies of men killed during 
the day. But everything living frightened him much 
more. He crouched, crept, crawled, made dashes, 
guided by a sort of animal instinct, keeping away from | 
every light and from every sound of voices. His idea ' 
was to throw himself at the feet of Captain Mitchell | 
and beg for shelter in the Company’s offices. It was \ 
all dark there as he approached on his hands and knees, 
but suddenly someone on guard challenged loudly, 

“ Quien vive? ” There were more dead men lying about, 
and he flattened himself down at once by the side of a 
cold corpse. He heard a voice saying, “Here is one of 
those wounded rascals crawling about. Shall I go and 
finish him.f^” And another voice objected that it was 
not safe to go out without a lantern upon such an er- 
rand; perhaps it was only some negro Liberal looking 
for a chance to stick a knife into the stomach of an 
honest man. Hirsch didn’t stay to hear any more, but 
crawling away to the end of the wharf, hid himself 
amongst a lot of empty casks. After a while some 
people came along, talking, and with glowing cigarettes. 
He did not stop to ask himself whether they would 
be likely to do him any harm, but bolted incontinently 
along the jetty, saw a lighter lying moored at the end. 


THE ISABELS 


273 


and threw himself into it. In his desire to find cover 
he crept right forward under the half-deck, and he had 
remained there more dead than alive, suffering agonies 
of hunger and thirst, and almost fainting with terror, 
when he heard numerous footsteps and the voices of 
the Europeans who came* in a body escorting the wagon- 
load of treasure, pushed along the rails by a squad of 
Cargadores. He understood perfectly what was being 
done from the talk, but did not disclose his presence 
from the fear that he would not be allowed to remain. 

I His only idea at the time, overpowering and masterful, 
was to get away from this terrible Sulaco. And now 
he regretted it very much. He had heard Nostromo 
talk to Decoud, and wished himself back on shore. 
He did not desire to be involved in any desperate affair 
— in a situation where one could not run away. The 
involuntary groans of his anguished spirit had betrayed 
him to the sharp ears of the Capataz. 

They had propped him up in a sitting posture against 
the side of the lighter, and he went on with the moaning 
account of his adventures till his voice broke, his head 
fell forward. “Water,” he whispered, with difficulty. 
Decoud held one of the cans to his lips. He revived 
after an extraordinarily short time, and scrambled up to 
his feet wildly. Nostromo, in an angry and threatening 
voice, ordered him forward. Hirsch was one of those 
men whom fear lashes like a whip, and he must have had 
an appalling idea of the Capataz’s ferocity. He dis- 
played an extraordinary agility in disappearing forward 
into the darkness. They heard him getting over the 
tarpaulin; then there was the sound of a heavy fall, 
followed by a weary sigh. Afterwards all was still in 
the fore-part of the lighter, as though he had killed him- 
self in his headlong tumble. Nostromo shouted in a 
menacing voice — 


274 


NOSTROMO 


“Lie still there! Do not move a limb. If I hear 
as much as a loud breath from you I shall come over 
there and put a bullet through your head.” 

The mere presence of a coward, however passive, 
brings an element of treachery into a dangerous situa- 
tion. Nostromo’s nervous impatience passed into 
gloomy thoughtfulness. Decoud, in an undertone, as 
if speaking to himself, remarked that, after all, this 
bizarre event made no great difference. He could 
not conceive what harm the man could do. At most 
he would be in the way, like an inanimate and useless 
object — like a block of wood, for instance. 

“I would think twice before getting rid of a piece of 
wood,” said Nostromo, calmly. “Something may 
happen unexpectedly where you could make use of it. 
But in an affair like ours a man like this ought to be 
thrown overboard. Even if he were as brave as a lion 
we would not want him here. We are not running 
away for our lives. Senor, there is no harm in a brave 
man trying to save himself with ingenuity and courage; 
but you have heard his tale, Don Martin. His being 

here is a miracle of fear ” Nostromo paused. 

“There is no room for fear in this lighter,” he added 
through his teeth. 

Decoud had no answer to make. It was not a posi- 
tion for argument, for a display of scruples or feelings. 
There were a thousand ways in which a panic-stricken 
man could make himself dangerous. It was evident 
that Hirsch could not be spoken to, reasoned with, or 
persuaded into a rational line of conduct. The story 
of his own escape demonstrated that clearly enough. 
Decoud thought that it was a thousand pities the I 
wretch had not died of fright. Nature, who had made 
him what he was, seemed to have calculated cruelly 
how much he could bear in the way of atrocious anguish 


THE ISABELS 


275 


without actually expiring. Some compassion was due 
to so much terror. Decoud, though imaginative enough 
for sympathy, resolved not to interfere with any action 
that Nostromo would take. But Nostromo did noth- 
ing. And the fate of Senor Hirsch remained sus- 
pended in the darkness of the gulf at the mercy of 
events which could not be foreseen. 

The Capataz, extending his hand, put out the candle 
suddenly. It was to Decoud as if his qompanion had 
destroyed, by a single touch, the worfd of affairs, of 
loves, of revolution, where his complacent superiority 
analyzed fearlessly all motives and all passions, in- 
cluding his own. 

He gasped a little. Decoud was affected by the 
novelty of his position. Intellectually self-confident, 
he suffered from being deprived of the only weapon he 
could use with effect. No intelligence could penetrate 
the darkness of the Placid Gulf. There remained only 
one thing he was certain of, and that was the over- 
weening vanity of his companion. It was direct, un- 
complicated, naive, and effectual. Decoud, who had 
been making use of him, had tried to understand his 
man thoroughly. He had discovered a complete 
singleness of motive behind the varied manifestations 
of a consistent character. This was why the man re- 
mained so astonishingly simple in the jealous greatness 
of his conceit. And now there was a complication. It 
was evident that he resented having been given a task 
in which there were so many chances of failure. ‘T 
wonder,” thought Decoud, “how he would behave if I 
were not here.” 

He heard Nostromo mutter again, “No! there is no 
room for fear on this lighter. Courage itself does not 
seem good enough. I have a good eye and a steady 
hand; no man can say he ever saw me tired or uncer- 


£76 


NOSTROMO 


tain what to do; but 'por Dios, Don Martin, I have been 
sent out into this black calm on a business where neither 
a good eye, nor a steady hand, nor judgment are any 
use. . . He swore a string of oaths in Spanish 

and Italian under his breath. “Nothing but sheer 
desperation will do for this affair.” 

These words were in strange contrast to the pre- 
vailing peace — ^to this almost solid stillness of the gulf. 
A shower , fell with an abrupt whispering sound all 
round the boat, and Decoud took off his hat, and, letting 
his head get wet, felt greatly refreshed. Presently a 
steady little draught of air caressed his cheek. The 
lighter began to move, but the shower distanced it. The 
drops ceased to fall upon his head and hands, the whis- 
pering died out in the distance. Nostromo emitted a 
grunt of satisfaction, and grasping the tiller, chirruped 
softly, as sailors do, to encourage the wind. Never for 
the last three days had Decoud felt less the need for 
what the Capataz would call desperation. 

“I fancy I hear another shower on the water,” he ob- 
served in a tone of quiet content. “ I hope it will catch 
us up.” 

Nostromo ceased chirruping at once. “You hear 
another shower.^” he said, doubtfully. A sort of thin- 
ning of the darkness seemed to have taken place, and 
Decoud could see now the outline of his companion’s 
figure, and even the sail came out of the night like a 
square block of dense snow. 

The sound which Decoud had detected came along 
the water harshly. Nostromo recognized that noise 
partaking of a hiss and a rustle which spreads out on all 
sides of a steamer making her way through a smooth 
water on a quiet night. It could be nothing else but 
the captured transport with troops from Esmeralda. 
She carried no lights. The noise of her steaming, grow- 


THE ISABELS 




ing louder every minute, would stop at times altogether, 
and then begin again abruptly, and sound startlingly 
nearer, as if that invisible vessel, whose position could 
not be precisely guessed, were making straight for the 
lighter. Meantime, that last kept on sailing slowly and 
noiselessly before a breeze so faint that it was only by 
leaning over the side and feeling the water slip througli 
his fingers that Decoud convinced himself they were 
moving at all. His drowsy feeling had departed. He 
was glad to know that the lighter was moving. After 
so much stillness the noise of the steamer seemed up- 
roarious and distracting. There was a weirdness in not 
being able to see her. Suddenly all was still. She had 
stopped, but so close to them that the steam, blowing off, 
sent its rumbling vibration right over their heads. 

“They are trying to make out where they are,” said 
Decoud in a whisper. Again he leaned over and put his 
fingers into the water. “We are moving quite smartly,” 
he informed Nostromo. 

“We seem to be crossing her bows,” said the Capataz 
in a cautious tone. “But this is a blind game with 
death. Moving on is of no use. We mustn’t be seen 
or heard.” 

His whisper was hoarse with excitement. Of all his 
face there was nothing visible but a gleam of white eye- 
balls. His fingers gripped Decoud’s shoulder. “That 
is the only way to save this treasure from this steamer 
full of soldiers. Any other would have carried lights. 
But you observe there is not a gleam to show us where 
she is.” 

Decoud stood as if paralyzed ; only his thoughts were 
wildly active. In the space of a second he remembered 
the desolate glance of Antonia as he left her at the bedside 
of her father in the gloomy house of Avellanos, with 
shuttered windows, but all the doors standing open, and 


278 


NOSTROMO 


deserted by all the servants except an old negro at the 
gate. He remembered the Casa Gould on his last visit, 
the arguments, the tones of his voice, the impenetrable 
attitude of Charles, Mrs. Gould’s face so blanched with 
anxiety and fatigue that her eyes seemed to have 
changed colour, appearing nearly black by contrast. 
Even whole sentences of the proclamation which he I 
meant to make Barrios issue from his headquarters at 
Cayta as soon as he got there passed through his mind; 
the very germ of the new State, the Separationist procla- 
mation which he had tried before he left to read hur- 
riedly to Don Jose, stretched out on his bed under the j 
fixed gaze of his daughter. God knows whether the old ' 
statesman had understood it; he was unable to speak, 
but he had certainly lifted his arm off the coverlet; his 
hand had moved as if to make the sign of the cross in the 
air, a gesture of blessing, of consent. Decoud had that 
very draft in his pocket, written in pencil on several 
loose sheets of paper, with the heavily-printed heading, 
“Administration of the San Tome Silver Mine. Sulaco. 
Republic of Costaguana.” He had written it furiously, 
snatching page after page on Charles Gould’s table. 
Mrs. Gould had looked several times over his shoulder 
as he wrote; but the Sen or Administrador, standing 
straddle-legged, would not even glance at it when it was 
finished. He had waved it away firmly. It must have 
been scorn, and not caution, since he never made a 
remark about the use of the Administration’s paper 
for such a compromising document. And that showed 
his disdain, the true English disdain of common pru- 
dence, as if everything outside the range of their own 
thoughts and feelings were unworthy of serious recog- 
nition. Decoud had the time in a second or two to be- 
come furiously angry with Charles Gould, and even re- 
sentful against Mrs. Gould, in whose care, tacitly it 


THE ISABELS 


279 


is true, he had left the safety of Antonia. Better 
perish a thousand times than owe your preservation to 
such people, he exclaimed mentally. The grip of 
Nostromo’s fingers never removed from his shoulder, 
tightening fiercely, recalled him to himself. 

“The darkness is our friend,’’ the Capataz murmured 
into his ear. “I am going to lower the sail, and trust 
our escape to this black gulf. No eyes could make us 
out lying silent with a naked mast. I will do it now, be- 
fore this steamer closes still more upon us. The faint 
creak of a block would betray us and the San Tome 
treasure into the hands of those thieves.” 

He moved about as warily as a cat. Decoud heard 
I no sound; and it was only by the disappearance of the 
i square blotch of darkness that he knew the yard had 
come down, lowered as carefully as if it had been made 
of glass. Next moment he heard Nostromo’s quiet 
breathing by his side. 

“You had better not move at all from where you are, 
Don Martin,” advised the Capataz, earnestly. “You 
might stumble or displace something which would make 
a noise. The sweeps and the punting poles are lying 
about. Move not for your life. Por Dios, Don Martin,” 
he went on in a keen but friendly whisper, “I am so 
desperate that if I didn’t know your worship to be a 
man of courage, capable of standing stock still whatever 
happens, I would drive my knife into your heart.” 

A deathlike stillness surrounded the lighter. It was 
diflScult to believe that there was near a steamer full of 
men with many pairs of eyes peering from her bridge for 
some hint of land in the night. Her steam had ceased 
blowing off, and she remained stopped too far off ap- 
parently for any other sound to reach the lighter. 

“Perhaps you would, Capataz,” Decoud began in a 
whisper. “However, you need not trouble. There 


280 


NOSTROMO 


are other things than the fear of your knife to keep my 
heart steady. It shall not betray you. Only, have you 
forgotten ” 

“I spoke to you openly as to a man as desperate as 
myself,” explained the Capataz. “The silver must be 
saved from the Monterists. I told Captain Mitchell 
three times that I preferred to go alone. I told Don 
Carlos Gould, too. It was in the Casa Gould. They 
had sent for me. The ladies were there; and when I 
tried to explain why I did not wish to have you with me, 
they promised me, both of them, great rewards for your 
safety. A strange way to talk to a man you are sending | 
out to an almost certain death. Those gentlefolk do not ' 
seem to have sense enough to understand what they j 
are giving one to do. I told them I could do nothing 
for you. You would have been safer with the bandit I 
Hernandez. It would have been possible to ride out of 1 
the town with no greater risk than a chance shot sent 
after you in the dark. But it was as if they had been 
deaf. I had to promise I would wait for you under the 
harbour gate. I did wait. And now because you are a 
brave man you are as safe as the silver. Neither more 
nor less.” 

At that moment, as if by way of comment upon Nos- 
tromo’s words, the invisible steamer went ahead at half 
speed only, as could be judged by the leisurely beat of 
her propeller. The sound shifted its place markedly, 
but without coming nearer. It even grew a little more 
distant right abeam of the lighter, and then ceased 
again. 

“They are trying for a sight of the Isabels,” muttered 
Nostromo, “in order to make for the harbour in a 
straight line and seize the Custom House with the 
treasure in it. Have you ever seen the Commandant of 
Esmeralda, Sotillo? A handsome fellow, with a soft 


THE ISABELS 


m 


voice. When I first came here I used to see him in the 
Calle talking to the senoritas at the windows of the 
houses, and showing his white teeth all the time. But 
one of my Cargadores, who had been a soldier, told me 
that he had once ordered a man to be flayed alive in the 
remote Campo, where he was sent recruiting amongst 
the people of the Estancias. It has never entered his 
head that the Compania had a man capable of baffling 
his game.’’ 

The murmuring loquacity of the Capataz disturbed 
Decoud like a hint of weakness. And yet, talkative 
resolution may be as genuine as grim silence. 

“Sotillo is not baffled so far,” he said. “Have you 
forgotten that crazy man forward.^” 

[ Nostromo had not forgotten Senor Hirsch. He re- 
I proached himself bitterly for not having visited the 
lighter carefully before leaving the wharf. He re- 
[ proached himself for not having stabbed and flung 
Hirsch overboard at the very moment of discovery with- 
out even looking at his face. That would have been 
consistent with the desperate character of the affair. 
Whatever happened, Sotillo was already baffled. Even 
if that wretch, now as silent as death, did anything to 
betray the nearness of the lighter, Sotillo — if Sotillo 
it was in command of the troops on board — would be 
still baffled of his plunder. 

‘T have an axe in my hand,” Nostromo whispered, 
wrathfully, “that in three strokes would cut through 
the side down to the water’s edge. Moreover, each 
lighter has a plug in the stern, and I know exactly where 
it is. I feel it under the sole of my foot.” 

Decoud recognized the ring of genuine determination 
in the nervous murmurs, the vindictive excitement of 
the famous Capataz. Before the steamer, guided by a 
shriek or two (for there could be no more than that, 


NOSTROMO 


282 

Nostromo said, gnashing his teeth audibly), could find i 
the lighter there would be plenty of time to sink this I 
treasure tied up round his neck. 

The last words he hissed into Decoud’s ear. Decoud 
said nothing. He was perfectly convinced. The 
usual characteristic quietness of the man was gone. 

It was not equal to the situation as he conceived it. 
Something deeper, something unsuspected by everyone, 
had come to the surface. Decoud, with careful move- 
ments, slipped off his overcoat and divested himself of 
his boots; he did not consider himself bound in honour 
to sink with the treasure. His object was to get down 
to Barrios, in Cayta, as the Capataz knew very well; and j 
he, too, meant, in his own way, to put into that attempt ; 
all the desperation of which he was capable. Nostromo | 
muttered, “True, true! You are a politician, sen or. 
Rejoin the army, and start another revolution.” He 
pointed out, however, that there was a little boat be- 
longing to every lighter fit to carry two men, if not more. . 
Theirs was towing behind. 

Of that Decoud had not been aware. Of course, it 
was too dark to see, and it was only when Nostromo 
put his hand upon its painter fastened to a cleat in the 
stern that he experienced a full measure of relief. The 
prospect of finding himself in the water and swimming, 
overwhelmed by ignorance and darkness, probably in a 
circle, till he sank from exhaustion, was revolting. The 
barren and cruel futility of such an end intimidated his 
affectation of careless pessimism. In comparison to it, 
the chance of being left floating in a boat, exposed 
to thirst, hunger, discovery, imprisonment, execution, 
presented itself with an aspect of amenity worth secur- 
ing even at the cost of some self -contempt. He did not 
accept Nostromo’s proposal that he should get into the 
boat at once. “Something sudden may overwhelm us, 


THE ISABELS 


senor,” the Capataz remarked promising faithfully, at 
the same time, to let go the painter at the moment 
when the necessity became manifest. 

But Decoud assured him lightly that he did not mean 
to take to the boat till the very last moment, and that 
then he meant the Capataz to come along, too. The 
darkness of the gulf was no longer for him the end of all 
things. It was part of a living world since, pervading 
it, failure and death could be felt at your elbow. And 
at the same time it was a shelter. He exulted in its 
impenetrable obscurity. “Like a wall, like a wall,” he 
muttered to himself. 

The only thing which checked his confidence was the 
I thought of Senor Hirsch. Not to have bound and 
I gagged him seemed to Decoud now the height of im- 
I provident folly. As long as the miserable creature had 
I the power to raise a yell he was a constant danger. His 
abject terror was mute now, but there was ^o saying 
from what cause it might suddenly find vent in shrieks. 

This very madness of fear which both Decoud and 
Nostromo had seen in the wild and irrational glances, 
and in the continuous twitchings of his mouth, protected 
Senor Hirsch from the cruel necessities of this desperate 
affair. The moment of silencing him for ever had 
passed. As Nostromo remarked, in answer to Decoud ’s 
regrets, it was too late! It could not be done without 
noise, especially in the ignorance of the man’s exact 
position. Wherever he had elected to crouch and 
tremble, it was too hazardous to go near him. He 
would begin probably to yell for mercy. It was much 
better to leave him quite alone since he was keeping so 
still. But to trust to his silence became every moment 
a greater strain upon Decoud’s composure. 

“I wish, Capataz, you had not let the right moment 
pass,” he murmured. 


284 


NOSTROMO 


‘‘ What ! To silence him for ever ! I thought it good 
to hear first how he came to be here. It was too 
strange. Who could imagine that it was all an accident.^ 
Afterwards, senor, when I saw you giving him water to 
drink, I^could not do it. Not after I had seen you 
holding up the can to his lips as though he were your | 
brother. Sefior, that sort of necessity must not be 
thought of too long. And yet it would have been no 
cruelty to take away from him his wretched life. It is 
nothing but fear. Your compassion saved him then, 
Don Martin, and now it is too late. It couldn’t be 
done without noise.” 

In the steamer they were keeping a perfect silence, 
and the stillness was so profound that Decoud felt as if 
the slightest sound conceivable must travel unchecked 
and audible to the end of the world. What if Hirsch 
coughed or sneezed.^ To feel himself at the mercy of 
such an idiotic contingency was too exasperating to be 
looked upon with irony. Nostromo, too, seemed to be 
getting restless. Was it possible, he asked himself, that 
the steamer, finding the night too dark altogether, in- 
tended to remain stopped where she was till daylight.^ 
He began to think that this, after all, was the real dan- 
ger. He was afraid that the darkness, which was his 
protection, would, in the end, cause his undoing. 

Sotillo, as Nostromo had surmised, was in command 
on board the transport. The events of the last forty- 
eight hours in Sulaco were not known to him; neither 
was he aware that the telegraphist in Esmeralda had 
managed to warn his colleague in Sulaco. Like a good 
many oflScers of the troops garrisoning the province, 
Sotillo had been influenced in his adoption of the Ri- 
bierist cause by the belief that it had the enormous 
wealth of the Gould Concession on its side. He had 
been one of the frequenters of the Casa Gould, where he 


THE ISABELS 


285 


had aired his Blanco convictions and his ardour for re- 
form before Don Jose Avellanos, casting frank, honest 
glances towards Mrs. Gould and Antonia the while. He 
was known to belong to a good family persecuted and 
impoverished during the tyranny of Guzman Bento. 
The opinions he expressed appeared eminently natural 
and proper in a man of his parentage and antecedents. 
And he was not a deceiver; it was perfectly natural for 
him to express elevated sentiments while his whole 
faculties were taken up with what seemed then a solid 
and practical notion — the notion that the husband of 
Antonia Avellanos would be, naturally, the intimate 
friend of the Gould Concession. He even pointed this 
out to Anzani once, when negotiating the sixth or 
seventh small loan in the gloomy, damp apartment 
with enormous iron bars, behind the principal shop in 
the whole row under the Arcades. He hinted to the 
universal shopkeeper at the excellent terms he was on 
with the emancipated senorita, who was like a sister 
to -the Englishwoman. He would advance one leg and 
put his arms akimbo, posing for Anzani’s inspection, and 
fixing him with a haughty stare. 

“Look, miserable shopkeeper! How can a man like 
me fail with any woman, let alone an emancipated girl 
living in scandalous freedom.?” he seemed to say. 

His manner in the Casa Gould was, of course, very 
different — devoid of all truculence, and even slightly 
mournful. Like most of his countrymen, he was carried 
away by the sound of fine words, especially if uttered 
by himself. He had no convictions of any sort upon 
anything except as to the irresistible power of his 
personal advantages. But that was so firm that even 
Decoud’s appearance in Sulaco, and his intimacy with 
the Goulds and the Avellanos, did not disquiet him. 
On the contrary, he tried to make friends with that 


£86 


NOSTROMO 


rich Costaguanero from Europe in the hope of borrow- 
ing a large sum by-and-by. The only guiding motive 
of his life was to get money for the satisfaction of his 
expensive tastes, which he indulged recklessly, having 
no self-control. He imagined himself a master of 
intrigue, but his corruption was as simple as an animal 
instinct. At times, in solitude, he had his moments of 
ferocity, and also on such occasions as, for instance, 
when alone in a room with Anzani trying to get a loan. 

He had talked himself into the command of the 
Esmeralda garrison. That small seaport had its impor- 
tance as the station of the main submarine cable con- 
necting the Occidental Provinces with the outer world, 
and the junction with it of the Sulaco branch. Don I 
Jose Avellanos proposed him, and Barrios, with a rude ' 
and jeering guffaw, had said, “Oh, let Sotillo go. He is 
a very good man to keep guard over the cable, and the 
ladies of Esmeralda ought to have their turn.” Barrios, 
an indubitably brave man, had no great opinion of So- 
tillo. 

It was through the Esmeralda cable alone that the 
San Tome mine could be kept in constant touch with 
the great financier, whose tacit approval made the . 
strength of the Ribierist movement. This movement 
had its adversaries even there. Sotillo governed 
Esmeralda with repressive severity till the adverse 
course of events upon the distant theatre of civil war j 
forced upon him the reflection that, after all, the great j 
silver mine was fated to become the spoil of the victors. ^ 
But caution was necessary. He began by assuming 
a dark and mysterious attitude towards the faithful 
Ribierist municipality of Esmeralda. Later on, the 
information that the commandant was holding as- 
semblies of officers in the dead of night (which had 
leaked out somehow) caused those gentlemen to neglect 


THE ISABELS 


287 


their civil duties altogether, and remain shut up in their 
; houses. Suddenly one day all the letters from Sulaco 
by the overland courier were carried off by a file of 
i soldiers from the post-ofl5ce to the Commandancia, 
without disguise, concealment, or apology. Sotillo had 
heard through Cayta of the final defeat of Ribiera. 

This was the first open sign of the change in his con- 
victions. Presently notorious democrats, who had been 
living till then in constant fear of arrest, leg irons, and 
I even floggings, could be observed going in and out at 
the great door of the Commandancia, where the horses 
of the orderlies doze under their heavy saddles, while 
the men, in ragged uniforms and pointed straw hats, 
lounge on a bench, with their naked feet stuck out 
beyond the strip of shade; and a sentry, in a red baize 
coat with holes at the elbows, stands at the top of the 
steps glaring haughtily at the common people, who un- 
cover their heads to him as they pass. 

Sotillo’s ideas did not soar above the care for his 
personal safety and the chance of plundering the town 
in his charge, but he feared that such a late adhesion 
would earn but scant gratitude from the victors. He 
had believed just a little too long in the power of the 
San Tome mine. The seized correspondence had con- 
firmed his previous information of a large amount of 
silver ingots lying in the Sulaco Custom House. To 
gain possession of it would be a clear Monteri^ move; a 
sort of service that would have to be rewarded. With 
the silver in his hands he could make terms for himself 
and his soldiers. He was aware neither of the riots, nor 
of the President’s escape to Sulaco and the close pursuit 
led by Montero’s brother, the guerrillero. The game 
seemed in his own hands. The initial moves were the 
seizure of the cable telegraph office and the securing 
of the Government steamer lying in the narrow creek 


288 


NOSTROMO 


which is the harbour of Esmeralda. The last was ef- 
fected without difficulty by a company of soldiers 
swarming with a rush over the gangways as she lay 
alongside the quay; but the lieutenant charged with the 
duty of arresting the telegraphist halted on the way be- 
fore the only cafe in Esmeralda, where he distributed 
some brandy to his men, and refreshed himself at the 
expense of the owner, a known Ribierist. The whole 
party became intoxicated, and proceeded on their 
mission up the street yelling and firing random shots at 
the windows. This little festivity, which might have 
turned out dangerous to the telegraphist’s life, enabled 
him in the end to send his warning to Sulaco. The 
lieutenant, staggering upstairs with a drawn sabre, was 
before long kissing him on both cheeks in one of those 
swift changes of mood peculiar to a state of drunken- 
ness. He clasped the telegraphist close round the neck, 
assuring him that all the officers of the Esmeralda 
garrison were going to be made colonels, while tears of 
happiness streamed down his sodden face. Thus it 
came about that the town major, coming along later, 
found the whole party sleeping on the stairs and in 
passages, and the telegraphist (who scorned this chance 
of escape) very busy clicking the key of the transmitter. 
The major led him away bareheaded, with his hands tied 
behind his back, but concealed the truth trom Sotillo, 
who remained in ignorance of the warning despatched 
to Sulaco. 

The colonel was not the man to let any sort of dark- 
ness stand in the way of the planned surprise. It ap- 
peared to him a dead certainty ; his heart was set upon 
his object with an ungovernable, childlike impatience. 
Ever since the steamer had rounded Punta Mala, to 
enter the deeper shadow of the gulf, he had remained on 
the bridge in a group of officers as excited as himself. 


THE ISABELS 


Distracted between the coaxings and menaces of Sotillo 
and his Staff, the miserable commander of the steamer 
kept her moving with as much prudence as they would 
let him exercise. Some of them had been drinking 
heavily, no doubt; but the prospect of laying hands 
on so much wealth made them absurdly foolhardy, and, 
at the same time, extremely anxious. The old major 
of the battalion, a stupid, suspicious man, who had 
never been afloat in his life, distinguished himself by 
putting out suddenly the binnacle light, the only one 
allowed on board for the necessities of navigation. He 
could not understand of what use it could be for finding 
the way. To the vehement protestations of the ship’s 
captain, he stamped his foot and tapped the handle of 
his sword. “Aha! I have unmasked you,” he cried, 
triumphantly. “You are tearing your hair from 
despair at my acuteness. Am I a child to believe that 
a light in that brass box can show you where the har- 
bour is.^ I am an old soldier, I am. I can smell a 
traitor a league off. You wanted that gleam to betray 
our approach to your friend the Englishman. A thing 
like that show you the way! What a miserable lie.’ 
Que picardia! You Sulaco people are all in the pay of 
those foreigners. You deserve to be run through the 
body with my sword.” Other oflScers, crowding round, 
tried to calm his indignation, repeating persuasively, 
“No, no! This is an appliance of the mariners, major. 
This is no treachery.” The captain of the transport 
flung himself face downwards on the bridge, and re- 
fused to rise. “Put an end to me at once,” he repeated 
in a stifled voice. Sotillo had to interfere. 

The uproar and confusion on the bridge became so 
great that the helmsman fled from the wheel. He took 
refuge in the engine-room, and alarmed the engineers, 
whoj disregarding the threats of the soldiers set on 


290 


NOSTROMO 


guard over them, stopped the engines, protesting that 
they would rather be shot than run the risk of being 
drowned down below. 

This was the first time Nostromo and Decoud heard 
the steamer stop. After order had been restored, and 
the binnacle lamp relighted, she went ahead again, pass- 
ing wide of the lighter in her search for the Isabels. The 
group could not be made out, and, at the pitiful en- 
treaties of the captain, Sotillo allowed the engines to 
be stopped again to wait for one of those periodical 
lightenings of darkness caused by the shifting of the 
cloud canopy spread above the waters of the gulf. 

Sotillo, on the bridge, muttered from time to time 
angrily to the captain. The other, in an apologetic 
and cringing tone, begged su merced the colonel to take 
into consideration the limitations put upon human 
faculties by the darkness of the night. Sotillo swelled 
with rage and impatience. It was the chance of a 
lifetime. 

‘Tf your eyes are of no more use to you than this, I 
shall have them put out,” he burst out. 

The captain of the steamer made no answer, for just 
then the mass of the Great Isabel loomed up darkly 
after a passing shower, then vanished, as if swept away 
by a wave of greater obscurity preceding another down- 
pour. This was enough for him. In the voice of a man 
come back to life again, he informed Sotillo that in an 
hour he would be alongside the Sulaco wharf. The 
ship was put then full speed on the course, and a great 
bustle of preparation for landing arose among the 
soldiers on her deck. 

It was heard distinctly by Decoud and Nostromo. 
The Capataz understood its meaning. They had made 
out the Isabels, and were going on now in a straight line 
for Sulaco. He judged that they would pass close; but 


THE ISABELS 


291 


believed that lying still like this, with the sail lowered, 
the lighter could not be seen. “No, not even if they 
rubbed sides with us,” he muttered. 

The rain began to fall again ; first like a wet mist, then 
with a heavier touch, thickening into a smart, perpen- 
dicular downpour; and the hiss and thump of the 
approaching steamer was coming extremely near. De- 
coud, with his eyes full of water, and lowered head, 
asked himself how long it would be before she drew 
past, when unexpectedly he felt a lurch. An inrush of 
foam broke swishing over the stern, simultaneously with 
a crack of timbers and a staggering shock. He had the 
impression of an angry hand laying hold of the lighter 
and dragging it along to destruction. The shock, of 
course, had knocked him down, and he found himself 
rolling in a lot of water at the bottom of the lighter. A 
violent churning went on alongside; a strange and 
amazed voice cried out something above him in the 
night. He heard a piercing shriek for help from Senor 
Hirsch. He kept his teeth hard set all the time. It 
was a collision! 

The steamer had struck the lighter obliquely, heeling 
her over till she was half swamped, starting some of her 
timbers, and swinging her head parallel to her own 
course with the force of the blow. The shock of it on 
board of her was hardly perceptible. All the violence 
of that collision was, as usual, felt only on board the 
smaller craft. Even Nostromo himself thought that 
this was perhaps the end of his desperate adventure. 
He, too, had been flung away from the long tiller, which 
took charge in the lurch. Next moment the steamer 
would have passed on, leaving the lighter to sink or 
swim after having shouldered her thus out of her way, 
and without even getting a glimpse of her form, had it 
not been that, being deeply laden with stores and the 




NOSTROMO 


great number of people on board, her anchor was low 
enough to hook itself into one of the wire shrouds of the 
lighter’s mast. For the space of two or three gasping 
breaths that new rope held against the sudden strain. 
It was this that gave Decoud the sensation of the 
snatching pull, dragging the lighter away to destruction. 
The cause of it, of course, was inexplicable to him. The 
whole thing was so sudden that he had no time to think. 
But all his sensations were perfectly clear; he had kept 
complete possession of himself; in fact, he was even 
pleasantly aware of that calmness at the very moment 
of being pitched head first over the transom, to struggle 
on his back in a lot of water. Senor Hirsch’s shriek he 
had heard and recognized while he was regaining his feet, 
always with that mysterious sensation of being dragged 
headlong through the darkness. Not a word, not a 
cry escaped him; he had no time to see anything; and 
following upon the despairing screams for help, the 
dragging motion ceased so suddenly that he staggered 
forward with open arms and fell against the pile of the 
treasure boxes. He clung to them instinctively, in the 
vague apprehension of being flung about again; and 
immediately he heard another lot of shrieks for help, 
prolonged and despairing, not near him at all, but 
unaccountably in the distance, away from the lighter 
altogether, as if some spirit in the night were mocking at 
Senor Hirsch’s terror and despair. 

Then all was still — as still as when you wake up in 
your bed in a dark room from a bizarre and agitated 
dream. The lighter rocked slightly; the rain was still 
falling. Two groping hands took hold of his bruised 
sides from behind, and the Capataz’s voice whispered, 
in his ear, “Silence, for your life! Silence! The 
steamer has stopped.” 

Decoud listened. The gulf was dumb. He felt the 


THE ISABELS 


293 


water nearly up to his knees. ‘‘Are we sinking?” he 
i asked in a faint breath. 

“I donT know,” Nostromo breathed back to him. 
“Sen or, make not the slightest sound.” 

Hirsch, when ordered forward by Nostromo, had not 
i returned into his first hiding-place. He had fallen near 
the mast, and had no strength to rise; moreover, he 
feared to move. He had given himself up for dead, but 
not on any rational grounds. It was simply a cruel and 
* terrifying feeling. Whenever he tried to think what 
i would become of him his teeth would start chattering 
violently. He was too absorbed in the utter misery 
of his fear to take notice of anything. 

Though he was stifling under the lighter’s sail which 
Nostromo had unwittingly lowered on top of him, he 
i did not even dare to put out his head till the very 
i moment of the steamer striking. Then, indeed, he 
leaped right out, spurred on to new miracles of bodily 
vigour by this new shape of danger. The inrush of 
water when the lighter heeled over unsealed his lips. 
His shriek, “Save me!” was the first distinct warning of 
the collision for the people on board the steamer. Next 
moment the wire shroud parted, and the released anchor 
swept over the lighter’s forecastle. It came against the 
breast of Senor Hirsch, who simply seized hold of it, 
without in the least knowing what it was, but curling 
his arms and legs upon the part above the fluke with an 
invincible, unreasonable tenacity. The lighter yawed 
off wide, and the steamer, moving on, carried him away, 
clinging hard, and shouting for help. It was some 
time, however, after the steamer had stopped that his 
position was discovered. His sustained yelping for 
help seemed to come from somebody swimming in the 
water. At last a couple of men went over the bows and 
hauled him on board. He was carried straight off to 


294 


NOSTROMO 


Sotillo on the bridge. His examination confirmed the 
impression that some craft had been run over and sunk, 
but it was impracticable on such a dark night to look for 
the positive proof of floating wreckage. Sotillo was 
more anxious than ever now to enter the harbour with- 
out loss of time; the idea that he had destroyed the 
principal object of his expedition was too intolerable to 
be accepted. This feeling made the story he had heard 
appear the more incredible. Senor Hirsch, after being 
beaten a little for telling lies, was thrust into the chart- 
room. But he was beaten only a little. His tale had 
taken the heart out of Sotillo’s Staff, though they all 
repeated round their chief, “Impossible! impossible!” 
with the exception of the old major, who triumphed 
gloomily. 

“I told you; I told you,” he mumbled. “I could 
smell some treachery, some diahleria a league off.” 

Meantime, the steamer had kept on her way towards 
Sulaco, where only the truth of that matter could be 
ascertained. Decoud and Nostromo heard the loud 
churning of her propeller diminish and die out; and 
then, with no useless words, busied themselves in mak- 
ing for the Isabels. The last shower had brought with 
it a gentle but steady breeze. The danger was not 
over yet, and there was no time for talk. The lighter 
was leaking like a sieve. They splashed in the water 
at every step. The Capataz put into Decoud’s hands 
the handle of the pump which was fitted at the side aft, 
and at once, without question or remark, Decoud be- 
gan to pump in utter forgetfulness of every desire but 
that of keeping the treasure afloat. Nostromo hoisted 
the sail, flew back to the tiller, pulled at the sheet like 
mad. The short flare of a match (they had been kept 
dry in a tight tin box, though the man himself was 
completely wet), the vivid flare of a match, disclosed to 


THE ISABELS 


295 


the toiling Decoud the eagerness of his face, bent low 
! over the box of the compass, and the attentive stare 
I of his eyes. He knew now where he was, and he hoped 
to run the sinking lighter ashore in the shallow cove 
where the high, cliff -like end of the Great Isabel is 
i divided in two equal parts by a deep and overgrown 
i ravine. 

I Decoud pumped without intermission. Nostromo 
! steered without relaxing for a second the intense, peer- 
ing effort of his stare. Each of them was as if utterly 
alone with his task. It did not occur to them to speak. 
There was nothing in common between them but the 
‘ knowledge that the damaged lighter must be slowly 
' but surely sinking. In that knowledge, which was like 
the crucial test of their desires, they seemed to have 
become completely estranged, as if they had discovered 
in the very shock of the collision that the loss of the 
lighter would not mean the same thing to them both. 
This common danger brought their differences in aim, in 
view, in character, and in position, into absolute promi- 
nence in the private vision of each. There was no bond 
of conviction, of common idea; they were merely two 
adventurers pursuing each his own adventure, involved 
in the same imminence of deadly peril. Therefore they 
had nothing to say to each other. But this peril, this 
only incontrovertible truth in which they shared, 
seemed to act as an inspiration to their mental and 
bodily powers. 

There was certainly something almost miraculous in 
the way the Capataz made the cove with nothing but 
the shadowy hint of the island’s shape and the vague 
gleam of a small sandy strip for a guide. Where the 
ravine opens between the cliffs, and a slender, shallow 
rivulet meanders out of the bushes to lose itself in the 
sea, the lighter was run ashore; and the two men, with 


296 


NOSTROMO 


a taciturn, undaunted energy, began to discharge her 
precious freight, carrying each ox-hide box up the bed 
of the rivulet beyond the bushes to a hollow place which 
the caving in of the soil had made below the roots of a 
large tree. Its big smooth trunk leaned like a falling 
column far over the trickle of water running amongst 
the loose stones. 

A couple of years before Nostromo had spent a whole 
Sunday, all alone, exploring the island. He explained 
this to Decoud after their task was done, and they sat, 
weary in every limb, with their legs hanging down the 
low bank, and their backs against the tree, like a pair 
of blind men aware of each other and their surroundings 
by some indefinable sixth sense. 

“Yes,’’ Nostromo repeated, “I never forget a place 
I have carefully looked at once.” He Spoke slowly, al- 
most lazily, as if there had been a whole leisurely life 
before him, instead of the scanty two hours before day- 
light. The existence of the treasure, barely concealed 
in this improbable spot, laid a burden of secrecy upon 
every contemplated step, upon every intention and plan 
of future conduct. He felt the partial failure of this 
desperate affair entrusted to the great reputation he had 
known how to make for himself. However, it was also 
a partial success. His vanity was half appeased. His 
nervous irritation had subsided. 

“You never know what may be of use,” he pursued 
with his usual quietness of tone and manner. “ I spent 
a whole miserable Sunday in exploring this crumb of 
land.” 

“A misanthropic sort of occupation,” muttered De-s 
coud, viciously. “You had no money, I suppose, to 
gamble with, and to fling about amongst the girls in 
your usual haunts, Capataz.” 

“£ veroV* exclaimed the Capataz, surprised into the 


THE ISABELS 


297 


use of his native tongue by so much perspicacity. “I 
I had not ! Therefore I did not want to go amongst those 
beggarly people accustomed to my generosity. It is 
looked for from the Capataz of the Cargadores, who 
I are the rich men, and, as it were, the Caballeros amongst 
I the common people. I don’t care for cards but as a 
I pastime ; and as to those girls that boast of having 
opened their doors to my knock, you know I wouldn’t 
Hook at any one of them twice except for what the 
I people would say. They are queer, the good people of 
I Sulaco, and I have got much useful information simply 
by listening patiently to the talk of the women that 
everybody believed I was in love with. Poor Teresa 
could never understand that. On that particular Sun- 
day, senor, she scolded so that I went out of the house 
! swearing that I would never darken their door again un^ 

; less to fetch away my hammock and my chest of clothes. 

I Senor, there is nothing more exasperating than to hear 
, a woman you respect rail against your good reputation 
I when you have not a single brass coin in your pocket. 
I untied one of the small boats and pulled myself out 
of the harbour with nothing but three cigars in my 
pocket to help me spend the day on this island. But 
the water of this rivulet you hear under your feet is cool 
and sweet and good, senor, both before and after a 
smoke.” He was silent for a while, then added re- 
flectively, “That was the first Sunday after I brought 
down the white-whiskered English rico all the way 
down the mountains from the Paramo on the top of the 
Entrada Pass — and in the coach, too! No coach had 
gone up or down that mountain road within the memory 
of man, senor, till I brought this one down in charge of 
fifty peons working like one man with ropes, pickaxes, 
and poles under my direction. That was the rich 
Englishman who, as people say, pays for the making of 


298 


NOSTROMO 


this railway. He was very pleased with me. But my 
wages were not due till the end of the month.” 

He slid down the bank suddenly. Decoud heard the 
splash of his feet in the brook and followed his footsteps 
down the ravine. His form was lost among the bushes 
till he had reached the strip of sand under the cliff. 
As often happens in the gulf when the showers 
during the first part of the night had been frequent and 
heavy, the darkness had thinned considerably towards 
the morning though there were no signs of daylight 
as yet. 

The cargo-lighter, relieved of its precious burden, 
rocked feebly, half -afloat, with her fore-foot on the sand. 
A long rope stretched away like a black cotton thread 
across the strip of white beach to the grapnel Nostromo 
had carried ashore and hooked to the stem of a tree-like 
shrub in the very opening of the ravine. 

There was nothing for Decoud but to remain on the 
island. He received from Nostromo’s hands whatever 
food the foresight of Captain Mitchell had put on 
board the lighter and deposited it temporarily in the 
little dinghy which on their arrival they had hauled up 
out of sight amongst the bushes. It was to be left with 
him. The island was to be a hiding-place, not a prison; 
he could pull out to a passing ship. The O.S.N. Com- 
pany’s mail boats passed close to the islands when going 
into Sulaco from the north. But the Minerva, carrying 
off the ex-president, had taken the news up north of the 
disturbances in Sulaco. It was possible that the next 
steamer down would get instructions to miss the port 
altogether since the town, as far as the Minerva's 
officers knew, was for the time being in the hands of the 
rabble. This would mean that there would be no 
steamer for a month, as far as the mail service went; but 
Decoud had to take his chance of that. The island was 


THE ISABELS 


299 


I! his only shelter from the proscription hanging over his 
> head. The Capataz was, of course, going back. The 
unloaded lighter leaked much less, and he thought that 
: she would keep afloat as far as the harbour. 

He passed to Decoud, standing knee-deep alongside, 

! one of the two spades which belonged to the equipment 
i of each lighter for use when ballasting ships. By work- 
ing with it carefully as soon as there was daylight 
enough to see, Decoud could loosen a mass of earth and 
stones overhanging the cavity in which they had 
deposited the treasure, so that it would look as if it had 
fallen naturally. It would cover up not only the cavity, 
but even all traces of their work, the footsteps, the dis- 
placed stones, and even the broken bushes. 

“Besides, who would think of looking either for you 
or the treasure here?” Nostromo continued, as' if he 
could not tear himself away from the spot. “Nobody 
is ever likely to come here. What could any man want 
with this piece of earth as long as there is room for his 
feet on the mainland! The people in this country are 
not curious. There are even no fishermen here to in- 
trude upon your worship. All the fishing that is done 
in the gulf goes on near Zapiga, over there. Senor, if 
you are forced to leave this island before anything can 
be arranged for you, do not try to make for Zapiga. It 
is a settlement of thieves and matreros, where they 
would cut your throat promptly for the sake of your 
gold watch and chain. And, senor, think twice before 
confiding in any one whatever; even in the officers of 
the Company’s steamers, if you ever get on board one. 
Honesty alone is not enough for security. You must 
look to discretion and prudence in a man. And always 
remember, senor, before you open your lips for a con- 
fidence, that this treasure may be left safely here for 
hundreds of years. Time is on its side, senor. And 


300 


NOSTROMO 


silver is an incorruptible metal that can be trusted to 
keep its value for ever. ... An incorruptible 
metal,” he repeated, as if the idea had given him a pro- 
found pleasure. 

“As some men are said to be,” Decoud pronounced, 
inscrutably, while the Capataz, who busied himself in 
baling out the lighter with a wooden bucket, went on 
throwing the water over the side with a regular splash. 
Decoud, incorrigible in his scepticism, reflected, not 
cynically, but with general satisfaction, that this man 
was made incorruptible by his enormous vanity, that 
finest form of egoism which can take on the aspect of 
every virtue. , 

Nostromo ceased baling, and, as if struck with a 
sudden thought, dropped the bucket with a clatter into 
the lighter. 

“Have you any message?” he asked in a lowered jj 
voice. “Remember, I shall be asked questions.” ‘j 

“You myst find the hopeful words that ought to be P 
spoken to the people in town. I trust for that your I 
intelligence and your experience, Capataz. You under- 
stand?” 

“Si, senor. . . . For the ladies.” 

“Yes, yes,” said Decoud, hastily. “Your wonderful 
reputation will make them attach great value to your 
words; therefore be careful what you say. I am look- 
ing forward,” he continued, feeling the fatal touch of 
contempt for himself to which his complex nature was 
subject, “I am looking forward to a glorious and suc- 
cessful ending to my mission. Do you hear, Capataz? 
Use the words glorious and successful when you speak 
to the senorita. Your own mission is accomplished 
gloriously and successfully. You have indubitably 
saved the silver of the mine. Not only this silver, but : 
probably all the silver that shall ever come out of it.” 


301 


THE ISABELS 

Nostromo detected the ironic tone. “I dare say, 
Senor Don Martin, lie said, moodily. ** There are very 
few things that I am not equal to. Ask the foreign 
signori. I, a man of the people, who cannot always 
understand what you mean. But as to this lot 
'which I must leave here, let me tell you that I would 
believe it in greater safety if you had not been with 
me at all.’’ 

An exclamation escaped Decoud, and a short pause 

I followed. “Shall I go back with you to Sulaco.^^” he 
asked in an angry tone. 

“Shall I strike you dead with my knife where you 
stand.^” retorted Nostromo, contemptuously. “It 
[would be the same thing as taking you to Sulaco. 

I Come, senor. Your reputation is in your politics, and 
imine is bound up with the fate of this silver. Do you 
wonder I wish there had been no other man to share my 
knowledge? I wanted no one with me, senor.” 

“You could not have kept the lighter afloat without 
jme,” Decoud almost shouted. “You would have gone 
to the bottom with her.” 

I “Yes,” uttered Nostromo, slowly; “alone.” 

Here was a man, Decoud reflected, that seemed as 
though he would have preferred to die rather than de- 
face the perfect form of his egoism. Such a man was 
safe. In silence he helped the Capataz to get the grap- 
nel on board. Nostromo cleared tke shelving shore 
with one push of the heavy oar, and Decoud found him- 
self solitary on the beach like a man in a dream. A 
sudden desire to hear a human voice once more seized 
upon his heart. The lighter was hardly distinguishable 
from the black water upon which she floated. 

“What do you think has become of Hirsch?” he 
shouted. 

“Knocked overboard and drowned,” cried Nos- 


302 


NOSTROMO 


tromo’s voice confidently out of the black wastes of sky 
and sea around the islet. “Keep close in the ravine, 
senor. I shall try to come out to you in a night or 
two.” 

A slight swishing rustle showed that Nostromo was 
setting the sail. It filled all at once with a sound as of ! 
a single loud drum-tap. Decoud went back to the j 
ravine. Nostromo, at the tiller, looked back from 
time to time at the vanishing mass of the Great Isabel, 
which, little by little, merged into the uniform texture 
of the night. At last, when he turned his head i 
again, he saw nothing but a smooth darkness, like a 
solid wall. 

Then he, too, experienced that feeling of solitude 
which had weighed heavily on Decoud after the lighter 
had slipped off the shore. But while the man on the , 
island was oppressed by a bizarre sense of unreality jj 
affecting the very ground upon which he walked, the 
mind of the Capataz of the Cargadores turned alertly 
to the problem of future conduct. Nostromo’s faculties, 
working on parallel lines, enabled him to steer straight, 
to keep a look-out for Hermosa, near which he had to 
pass, and to try to imagine what would happen to- 
morrow in Sulaco. To-morrow, or, as a matter of fact, 
to-day, since the dawn was not very far, Sotillo would 
find out in what way the treasure had gone. A gang of 
Cargadores had been employed in loading it into a rail- | 
way truck from the Custom House store-rooms, and 
running the truck on to the wharf. There would be 
arrests made, and certainly before noon Sotillo would 
know in what manner the silver had left Sulaco, and 
who it was that took it out. 

Nostromo’s intention had been to sail right into the 
harbour; but at this thought by a sudden touch of the j 
tiller he threw the lighter into the wind and checked j 


THE ISABELS 


303 


her rapid way. His re-appearance with the very boat 
would raise suspicions, would cause surmises, would 
j absolutely put Sotillo on the track. He himself would 
be arrested; and once in the Calabozo there was no 
saying what they would do to him to make him speak. 
He trusted himself, but he stood up to look round. 
Near by, Hermosa showed low its white surface as flat 
as a table, with the slight run of the sea raised by the 
breeze washing over its edges noisily. The lighter 
must be sunk at once. 

He allowed her to drift with her sail aback. There 
was already a good deal of water in her. He allowed 
her to drift towards the harbour entrance, and, letting 
the tiller swing about, squatted down and busied himself 
in loosening the plug. With that out she would fill 
very quickly, and every lighter carried a little iron 
! ballast — enough to make her go down when full of 
: water. When he stood up again the noisy wash about 
i the Hjermosa sounded far away, almost inaudible; and 
already he could make out the shape of land about the 
harbour entrance. This was a desperate affair, and he 
was a good swimmer. A mile was nothing to him, and 
he knew of an easy place for landing just below the 
earthworks of the old abandoned fort. It occurred to 
him with a peculiar fascination that this fort was a good 
place in which to sleep the day through after so many 
sleepless nights. 

With one blow of the tiller he unshipped for the pur- 
pose, he knocked the plug out, but did not take the 
trouble to lower the sail. He felt the water welling up 
heavily about his legs before he leaped on to the taffrail. 
There, upright and motionless, in his shirt and trousers 
only, he stood waiting. When he had felt her settle he 
sprang far away with a mighty splash. 

At once he turned his head. The gloomy, clouded 


304 


NOSTROMO 


dawn from behind the mountains showed him on the 
smooth waters the upper corner of the sail, a dark wet 
triangle of canvas waving slightly to and fro. He saw 
it vanish, as if jerked under, and then struck out for the 
shore. 


i 


•s 




PART THIRD 

THE LIGHTHOUSE 


'€4 





CHAPTER ONE 


Directly the cargo boat had slipped away from the 
wharf and got lost in the darkness of the harbour the 
Europeans of Sulaco separated, to prepare for the com- 
ing of the Monterist regime, which was approaching 
Sulaco from the mountains, as well as from the sea. 

This bit of manual work in loading the silver was 
their last concerted action. It ended the three days of 
danger, during which, according to the newspaper press 
of Europe, their energy had preserved the town from the 
calamities of popular disorder. At the shore end of the 
jetty. Captain Mitchell said good-night and turned 
back. His intention was to walk the planks of the^ 
wharf till the steamer from Esmeralda turned up. The 
engineers of the railway staff, collecting their Basque 
and Italian workmen, marched them away to the rail- 
way yards, leaving the Custom House, so well defended 
on the first day of the riot, standing open to the four 
winds of heaven. Their men had conducted themselves 
bravely and faithfully during the famous “three days” 
of Sulaco. In a great part this faithfulness and that 
courage had been exercised in self-defence rather than 
in the cause of those material interests to which Charles 
Gould had pinned his faith. Amongst the cries of the 
mob not the least loud had been the cry of death to 
foreigners. It was, indeed, a lucky circumstance for 
Sulaco that the relations of those imported workmen 
with the people of the country had been uniformly bad 
from the first. 

Doctor Monygham, going to the door of Viola’s 
307 


308 


NOSTROMO 


kitchen, observed this retreat marking the end of the 
foreign interference, this withdrawal of the army of 
material progress from the field of Costaguana revolu- 
tions. 

Algarrobe torches carried on the outskirts of the 
moving body sent their penetrating aroma into his 
nostrils. Their light, sweeping along the front of the 
house, made the letters of the inscription, “Albergo 
dTtalia Una,” leap out black from end to end of the 
long wall. His eyes blinked in the clear blaze. Several 
young men, mostly fair and tall, shepherding this mob 
of dark bronzed heads, surmounted by the glint of 
slanting rifle barrels, nodded to him familiarly as they 
went by. The doctor was a well-known character. 
Some of them wondered what he was doing there. 
Then, on the flank of their workmen they tramped on, 
following the line of rails. 

“Withdrawing your people from the harbour.^” 
said the doctor, addressing himself to the chief engineer 
of the railway, who had accompanied Charles Gould so 
far in his way to the town, walking by the side of the 
horse, with his hand on the saddle-bow. They had 
stopped just outside the open door to let the workmen 
cross the road. 

“As quick as I can. We are not a political faction,” 
answered the engineer, meaningly. “And we are not 
going to give our new rulers a handle against the rail- 
way. You approve me, Gould?” 

“Absolutely,” said Charles Gould’s impassive voice, 
high up and outside the dim parallelogram of light fall- 
ing on the road through the open door. 

With Sotillo expected from one side, and Pedro 
Montero from the other, the engineer-in-chief’s only 
anxiety now was to avoid a collision with either. Sulaco, 
for him, was a railway station, a terminus, workshops, 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


309 


great accumulation of stores. As against the mob 
the railway defended its property, but politically the 
railway was neutral. He was a brave man; and in that 
spirit of neutrality he had carried proposals of truce to 
the self-appointed chiefs of the popular party, the 
deputies Fuentes and Gamacho. Bullets were still 
flying about when he had crossed the Plaza on that 
mission, waving above his head a white napkin belong- 
ing to the table linen of the Amarilla Club. 

He was rather proud of this exploit; and reflecting 
that the doctor, busy all day with the wounded in the 
patio of the Casa Gould, had not had time to hear the 
news, he began a succinct narrative. He had communi- 
cated to them the intelligence from the Construction 
Camp as to Pedro Montero. The brother of the vic- 
torious general, he had assured them, could be expected 
at Sulaco at any time now. This news (as he antici- 
pated), when shouted out of the window by Senor 
Gamacho, induced a rush of the mob along the Campo 
Road towards Rincon. The two deputies also, after 
shaking hands with him effusively, mounted and 
galloped off to meet the great man. “I have misled 
them a little as to the time,” the chief engineer con- 
fessed. “However hard he rides, he can scarcely get 
here before the morning. But my object is attained. 
IVe secured several hours’ peace for the losing party. 
But I did not tell them anything about Sotillo, for fear 
they would take it into their heads to try to get hold 
of the harbour again, either to oppose him or welcome 
him — there’s no saying which. There was Gould’s 
silver, on which rests the remnant of our hopes. De- 
coud’s retreat had to be thought of, too. I think the 
railway has done pretty well by its friends without com- 
promising itself hopelessly. Now the parties must be 
left to themselves.” 


310 


NOSTROMO 


‘‘Costaguana for the Costaguaneros,” interjected the 
doctor, sardonically. “It is a fine country, and they 
have raised a fine crop of hates, vengeance, murder, 
and rapine — those sons of the country.” 

“Well, I am one of them,” Charles Gould’s voice 
sounded, calmly, “and I must be going on to see to my 
own crop of trouble. My wife has driven straight on, 
doctor 

“Yes. All was quiet on this side. Mrs. Gould has 
taken the two girls with her.” 

Charles Gould rode on, and the engineer-in-chief 
followed the doctor indoors. 

“That man is calmness personified,” he said, appre- 
ciatively, dropping on a bench, and stretching his well- 
shaped legs in cycling stockings nearly across the door- 
way. “He must be extremely sure of himself.” 

“If that’s all he is sure of, then he is sure of nothing,” 
said the doctor. He had perched himself again on the 
end of the table. He nursed his cheek in the palm of 
one hand, while the other sustained the elbow. “It is 
the last thing a man ought to be sure of.” The candle, 
half-consumed and burning dimly with a long wick, 
lighted up from below his inclined face, whose expression 
affected by the drawn-in cicatrices in the cheeks, had 
something vaguely unnatural, an exaggerated remorse- 
ful bitterness. As he sat there he had the air of medi- 
tating upon sinister things. The engineer-in -chief 
gazed at him for a time before he protested. 

“I really don’t see that. For me there seems to be 
nothing else. However- ” 

He was a wise man, but he could not quite conceal 
his contempt for that sort of paradox; in fact. Dr. 
Monygham was not liked by the Europeans of Sulaco. 
His outward aspect of an outcast, which he preserved 
even in Mrs. Gould’s drawing-room, provoked un- 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


311 

favourable criticism. There could be no doubt of his 
intelligence; and as he had lived for over twenty years 
in the country, the pessimism of his outlook could not be 
altogether ignored. But instinctively, in self-defence 
of their activities and hopes, his hearers put it to the 
account of some hidden imperfection in the man’s 
character. It was known that many years before, 
when quite young, he had been made by Guzman Bento 
chief medical officer of the army. Not one of the 
Europeans then in the service of Costaguana had been 
so much liked and trusted by the fierce old Dictator. 

Afterwards his story was not so clear. It lost itself 
amongst the innumerable tales of conspiracies and 
plots against the tyrant as a stream is lost in an arid 
belt of sandy country before it emerges, diminished and 
troubled, perhaps, on the other side. The doctor made 
no secret of it that he had lived for years in the wildest 
parts of the Republic, wandering with almost unknown 
Indian tribes in the great forests of the far interior where 
the great rivers have their sources. But it was mere 
aimless wandering; he had written nothing, collected 
nothing, brought nothing for science out of the twilight 
of the forests, which seemed to cling to his battered 
personality limping about Sulaco, where it had drifted in 
casually, only to get stranded on the shores of the sea. 

It was also known that he had lived in a state of 
destitution till the arrival of the Goulds from Europe. 
Don Carlos and Dona Emilia had taken up the mad 
English doctor, when it became apparent that for all 
his savage independence he could be tamed by kindness. 
Perhaps it was only hunger that had tamed him. In 
years gone by he had certainly been acquainted with 
Charles Gould’s father in Sta. Marta; and now, no 
matter what were the dark passages of his history, as the 
medical officer of the San Tome mine he became a recog- 


312 


NOSTROMO 


nized personality. He was recognized, but not unre- 
servedly accepted. So much defiant eccentricity and 
such an outspoken scorn for mankind seemed to point to 
mere recklessness of judgment, the bravado of guilt. 
Besides, since he had become again of some account, 
vague whispers had been heard that years ago, when 
fallen into disgrace and thrown into prison by Guzman 
Bento at the time of the so-called Great Conspiracy, he 
had betrayed some of his best friends amongst the 
conspirators. Nobody pretended to believe that whis- 
per; the whole story of the. Great Conspiracy was 
hopelessly involved and obscure; it is admitted in Costa- 
guana that there never had been a conspiracy except in 
the diseased imagination of the Tyrant; and, therefore, 
nothing and no one to betray; though the most dis- 
tinguished Costaguaneros had been imprisoned and 
executed upon that accusation. The procedure had 
dragged on for years, decimating the better class like 
a pestilence. The mere expression of sorrow for the 
fate of executed kinsmen had been punished with death. 
Don Jose Avellanos was perhaps the only one living who 
knew the whole story of those unspeakable cruelties. 
He had suffered from them himself, and he, with a 
shrug of the shoulders and a nervous, jerky gesture of 
the arm, was wont to put away from him, as it were, 
every allusion to it. But whatever the reason. Dr. 
Monygham, a personage in the administration of the 
Gould Concession, treated with reverent awe by the 
miners, and indulged in his peculiarities by Mrs. 
Gould, remained somehow outside the pale. 

It was not from any liking for the doctor that the 
engineer-in-chief had lingered in the inn upon the i)lain. 
He liked old Viola much better. He had come to look 
upon the Albergo dTtalia Una as a dependence of the 
railway. Many of his subordinates had their quarters 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


313 


there. Mrs. Gould’s interest in the family conferred 
^ upon it a sort of distinction. The engineer-in-chief, 
1 1 with an army of workers under his orders, appreciated 
the moral influence of the old Garibaldino upon his 
countrymen. His austere, old-world Republicanism 
I had a severe, soldier-like standard of faithfulness and 

I duty, as if the world were a battlefield where men had 
to fight for the sake of universal love and brotherhood, 
instead of a more or less large share of booty. 

“Poor old chap!” he said, after he had heard the 
doctor’s account of Teresa. “He’ll never be able to 
keep the place going by himself. I shall be sorry.” 

“He’s quite alone up there,” grunted Doctor Monyg- 
ham, with a toss of his heavy head towards the narrow 
i staircase. “Every living soul has cleared out, and Mrs. 

I Gould took the girls away just now. It might not be 
[ over-safe for them out here before very long. Of 
course, as a doctor I can do nothing more here; but she 
I has asked me to stay with old Viola, and as I have no 
I horse to get back to the mine, where I ought to be, I 
made no difiiculty to stay. They can do without me in 
the town.” 

“ I have a good mind to reniain with you, doctor, till 
we see whether anything happens to-night at the 
harbour,” declared the engineer-in-chief. “He must 
not be molested by Sotillo’s soldiery, who may push bn 
as far as this at once. Sotillo used to be very cordial 
to me at the Goulds’ and at the club. How that man’ll 
ever dare to look any of his friends here in the face I 
can’t imagine.” 

“He’ll no doubt begin by shooting some of them to 
get over the first awkwardness,” said the doctor. 
“Nothing in this country serves better your military 
man who has changed sides than a few summary 
executions.” He spoke with a gloomy positiveness 


314 


NOSTROMO 


that left no room for protest. The engineer-in-chief 
did not attempt any. He simply nodded several 
times regretfully, then said — 

“I think we shall be able to mount you in the morn- 
ing, doctor. Our peons have recovered some of our 
stampeded horses. By riding hard and taking a wide 
circuit by Los Hatos and along the edge of the forest, 
clear of Rincon altogether, you may hope to reach the 
San Tome bridge without being interfered with. The 
mine is just now, to my mind, the safest place for any- 
body at all compromised. I only wish the railway was 
as difficult to touch. ’’ 

“Am I compromised.^” Doctor Monygham brought 
out slowly after a short silence. 

“The whole Gould Concession is compromised. I 
could not have remained for ever outside the political 
life of the country — if those convulsions may be called 
life. The thing is — can it be touched.^ The moment 
was bound to come when neutrality would become im- 
possible, and Charles Gould understood this well. I 
believe he is prepared for every extremity. A man of 
his sort has never contemplated remaining indefinitely , 
at the mercy of ignorance and corruption. It was like 
being a prisoner in a cavern of banditti with the price of 
your ransom in your pocket, and buying your life from 
day to day. Your mere safety, not your liberty, mind, 
doctor. I know what I am talking about. The image 
at which you shrug your shoulders is perfectly correct, 
especially if you conceive such a prisoner endowed with 
the power of replenishing his pocket by means as remote 
from the faculties of his captors as if they were magic. 
You must have understood that as well as I do, doctor. 
He was in the position of the goose with the golden 
eggs. I broached this matter to him as far back as Sir 
John’s visit here. The prisoner of stupid and greedy 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


315 


I banditti is always at the mercy of the first imbecile 
j ruffian, who may blow out his brains in a fit of temper or 
; for some prospect of an immediate big haul. The tale of 
I killing the goose with the golden eggs has not been 
I evolved for nothing out of the wisdom of mankind. It 
is a story that will never grow old. That is why 
Charles Gould in his deep, dumb way has countenanced 
the Ribierist Mandate, the first public act that promised 
him safety on other than venal grounds. Ribierism has 
failed, as everything merely rational fails in this 
country. But Gould remains logical in wishing to save 
this big lot of silver. Decoud’s plan of a counter- 
revolution may be practicable or not, it may have a 
chance, or it may not have a chance. With all my 
experience of this revolutionary continent, I can hardly 
yet look at their methods seriously. Decoud has been 
reading to us his draft of a proclamation, and talking 
very well for two hours about his plan of action. He 
had arguments which should have appeared solid 
enough if we, members of old, stable political and 
national organizations, were not startled by the mere 
idea of a new State evolved like this out of the head of a 
scoffing young man fleeing for his life, with a proclama- 
tion in his pocket, to a rough, jeering, half-bred swash- 
buckler, who in this part of the world is called a general. 
It sounds like a comic fairy tale — and behold, it may 
come off; because it is true to the very spirit of the 
country.” 

“Is the silver gone off, then.^” asked the doctor, 
moodily. 

The chief engineer pulled out his watch. “By 
Captain Mitchell’s reckoning — and he ought to know-r- 
it has been gone long enough now to be some three or 
four miles outside the harbour; and, as Mitchell says, 
Nostromo is the sort of seaman to make the best of his 


316 


NOSTROMO 


opportunities.” Here the doctor grunted so heavily that 
the other changed his tone. 

“ You have a poor opinion of that move, doctor? But 
why? Charles Gould has got to play his game out, 
though he is not the man to formulate his conduct even 
to himself, perhaps, let alone to others. It may be that 
the game has been partly suggested to him by Holroyd ; 
but it accords with his character, too; and that is why it 
has been so successful. Haven’t they come to calling 
him ‘El Rey de Sulaco’ in Sta. Marta? A nickname 
may be the best record of a success. That’s what I call 
putting the face of a joke upon the body of a truth. My 
dear sir, when I first arrived in Sta. Marta I was struck 
by the way all those journalists, demagogues, members 
of Congress, and all those generals and judges cringed 
before a sleepy-eyed advocate without practice simply 
because he was the plenipotentiary of the Gould Conces- 
sion. Sir John when he came out was impressed, too.” 

“A new State, with that plump dandy, Decoud, for 
the first President,” mused Dr. Monygham, nursing his 
cheek and swinging his legs all the time. 

“Upon my word, and why not?” the chief engineer 
retorted in an unexpectedly earnest and confidential 
voice. It was as if something subtle in the air of 
Costaguana had inoculated him with the local faith in 
“pronunciamientos.” All at once he began to talk, like 
an expert revolutionist, of the instrument ready to hand 
in the intact army at Cayta, which could be brought 
back in a few days to Sulaco if only Decoud managed to 
make his way at once down the coast. For the military 
chief there was Barrios, who had nothing but a bullet to 
expect from Montero, his former professional rival and 
bitter enemy. Barrios’s concurrence was assured. As 
to his army, it had nothing to expect from Montero 
either; not even a month’s pay. From that point of 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


317 


I view the existence of the treasure was of enormous 
importance. The mere knowledge that it had been 
saved from the Monterists would be a strong induce- 
ment for the Cayta troops to embrace the cause of the 
new State. 

The doctor turned round and contemplated his com- 
panion for some time. 

“This Decoud, I see, is a persuasive young beggar,” 
he remarked at last. “And pray is it for this, then, 
that Charles Gould has let the whole lot of ingots go 
out to sea in charge of that Nostromo.?” 

“Charles Gould,” said the engineer-in-chief, “has 
said no more about his motive than usual. You know, 
he doesn’t talk. But we all here know his motive, and 
he has only one — the safety of the San Tome mine with 
the preservation of the Gould Concession in the spirit 
of his compact with Holroyd. Holroyd is another un^ 
common man. They understand each other’s imagina- 
tive side. One is thirty, the other nearly sixty, and 
they have been made for each other. To be a million- 
aire, and such a millionaire as Holroyd, is like being 
eternally young. The audacity of youth reckons upon 
what it fancies an unlimited time at its disposal; but a 
millionaire has unlimited means in his hand — which is 
better. One’s time on earth is an uncertain quantity, 
but about the long reach of millions there is no doubt. 
The introduction of a pure form of Christianity into this 
continent is a dream for a youthful enthusiast, and I 
have been trying to explain to you why Holroyd at 
fifty-eight is like a man on the threshold of life, and 
better, too. He’s not a missionary, but the San Tome 
mine holds just that for him. I assure you, in sober 
truth, that he could not manage to keep this out of a 
strictly business conference upon the finances of Cos- 
taguana he had with Sir John a couple of years ago. 


318 


NOSTROMO 


Sir John mentioned it with amazement in a letter he 
wrote to me here, from San Francisco, when on his way 
home. Upon my word, doctor, things seem to be worth 
nothing by what they are in themselves. I begin to 
believe that the only solid thing about them is the 
spiritual value which everyone discovers in his own 
form of activity ” 

“Bah!” interrupted the doctor, without stopping for 
an instant the idle swinging movement of his legs. 
“ Self-flattery. Food for that vanity which makes the 
world go round. Meantime, what do you think is 
going to happen to the treasure floating about the gulf 
with the great Capataz and the great politician?” 

“Why are you uneasy about it, doctor?” 

“I uneasy! And what the devil is it to me? I put 
no spiritual value into my desires, or my opinions, or my 
actions. They have not enough vastness to give me 
room for self -flattery. Look, for instance, I should cer- 
tainly have liked to ease the last moments of that poor 
woman. And I can’t. It’s impossible. Have you met 
the impossible face to face — or have you, the Napoleon 
of railways, no such word in your dictionary?” 

“Is she bound to have a very bad time of it?” asked 
the chief engineer, with humane concern. 

Slow, heavy footsteps moved across the planks above 
the heavy hard wood beams of the kitchen. Then 
down the narrow opening of the staircase made in the 
thickness of the wall, and narrow enough to be defended 
by one man against twenty enemies, came the murmur 
of two voices, one faint and broken, the other deep and 
gentle answering it, and in its graver tone covering the 
weaker sound. 

The two men remained still and silent till the mur- 
murs ceased, then the doctor shrugged his shoulders and 
muttered — 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 319 

“Yes, she’s bound to. And I could do nothing if I 
went up now.” 

A long period of silence above and below ensued. 

“I fancy,” began the engineer, in a subdued voice, 
“that you mistrust Captain Mitchell’s Capataz.” 

“Mistrust him!” muttered the doctor through his 
teeth. “I believe him capable of anything — even of 
the most absurd fidelity. I am the last person he spoke 
to before he left the wharf, you know. The poor 
woman up there wanted to see him, and I let him go up 
to her. The dying must not be contradicted, you 
know. She seemed then fairly calm and resigned, but 
the scoundrel in those ten minutes or so has done or 
said something which seems to have driven her into 
despair. You know,” went on the doctor, hesitatingly, 
“women are so very unaccountable in every position, 
and at all times of life, that I thought sometimes she 
was in a way, don’t you see? in love with him — the 
Capataz. The rascal has his own charm indubitably, 
or he would not have made the conquest of all the 
populace of the town. No, no, I am not absurd. I 
may have given a wrong name to some strong senti- 
ment for him on her part, to an unreasonable and 
simple attitude a woman is apt to take up emotionally 
towards a man. She used to abuse him to me fre- 
quently, which, of course, is not inconsistent with my 
idea. Not at all. It looked to me as if she were al- 
ways thinking of him. He was something important 
in her life. You know, I have seen a lot of those people. 
Whenever I came down from the mine Mrs. Gould used 
to ask me to keep my eye on them. She likes Italians; 
she has lived a long time in Italy, I believe, and she took 
a special fancy to that old Garibaldino. A remarkable 
chap enough. A rugged and dreamy character, living 
in the republicanism of his young days as if in a cloud. 


320 


NOSTROMO 


He has encouraged much of the Capataz’s confounded 
nonsense — the high-strung, exalted old beggar!” 

“What sort of nonsense?” wondered the chief engi- 
neer. “I found the Capataz always a very shrewd 
and sensible fellow, absolutely fearless, and remarkably 
useful. A perfect handy man. Sir John was greatly 
impressed by his resourcefulness and attention when he 
made that overland journey from Sta. Marta. Later 
on, as you might have heard, he rendered us a service 
by disclosing to the then chief of police the presence in 
the town of some professional thieves, who came from a 
distance to wreck and rob our monthly pay train. He 
has certainly organized the lighterage service of the 
harbour for the O.S.N. Company with great ability. 
He knows how to make himself obeyed, foreigner though 
he is. It is true that the Cargadores are strangers here, 
too, for the most part — immigrants, Islenos.” 

“His prestige is his fortune,” muttered the doctor, 
sourly. 

“The man has proved his trustworthiness up to the 
hilt on innumerable occasions and in all sorts of ways,” 
argued the engineer. “When this question of the silver 
arose. Captain Mitchell naturally was very warmly of 
the opinion that his Capataz was the only man fit for 
the trust. As a sailor, of course, I suppose so. But as 
a man, don’t you know, Gould, Decoud, and myself 
judged that it didn’t matter in the least who went. 
Any boatman would have done just as well. Pray, 
what could a thief do with such a lot of ingots? If ^ 
ran off with them he would have in the end to land some- 
where, and how could he conceal his cargo from the 
knowledge of the people ashore? We dismissed that 
consideration from our minds. Moreover, Decoud was 
going. There have been occasions when the Capataz 
has been more implicitly trusted.” 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


321 


“He took a slightly different view,” the doctor said. 
“ I heard him declare in this very room that it would be 
the most desperate affair of his life. He made a sort of 
verbal will here in my hearing, appointing old Viola his 
executor; and, by Jove! do you know, he — he’s not 
grown rich by his fidelity to you good people of the rail- 
way and the harbour. I suppose he obtains some — 
how do you say that.^ — some spiritual value for his 
labours, or else I don’t know why the devil he should 
be faithful to you, Gould, Mitchell, or anybody else. 
He knows this country well. He knows, for instance, 
that Gamacho, the Deputy from Javira, has been noth- 
ing else but a ‘tramposo’ of the commonest sort, a petty 
pedlar of the Campo, till he managed to get enough 
goods on credit from Anzani to open a little store in the 
wilds, and got himself elected by the drunken mozos 
that hang about the Estancias and the poorest sort of 
rancheros who were in his debt. And Gamacho, who 
to-morrow will be probably one of our high oflScials, is a 
stranger, too — an Isleno. He might have been a 
Cargador on the O. S. N. wharf had he not (the posadero 
of Rincon is ready to swea^r it) murdered a pedlar in the 
woods and stolen his pack to begin life on. And do you 
think that Gamacho, then, would have ever become a 
hero with the democracy of this place, like our Capataz? 
Of course not. He isn’t half the man. No; decidedly, 
I think that Nostromo is a fool.” 

The doctor’s talk was distasteful to the builder of 
railways. “It is impossible to argue that point,” he said, 
philosophically. “Each man has his gifts. You should 
have heard Gamacho haranguing his friends in the street. 
He has a howling voice, and he shouted like mad, lifting 
his clenched fist right above his head, and throwing his 
body half out of the window. At every pause the 
rabble below yelled, ‘Down with the Oligarchs! Viva 


322 


NOSTROMO 


la Libertad!’ Fuentes inside looked extremely miser- 
able. You know, he is the brother of Jorge Fuentes, 
who has been Minister of the Interior for six months or 
so, some few years back. Of course, he has no con- 
science; but he is a man of birth and education — at one 
time the director of the Customs of Cayta. That 
idiot-brute Gamacho fastened himself upon him with 
his following of the lowest rabble. His sickly fear of 
that ruffian was the most rejoicing sight imaginable.” 

He got up and went to the door to look out towards 
the harbour. “All quiet,” he said; “I wonder if Sotillo 
really means to turn up here?” 


CHAPTER TWO 


Captain Mitchell, pacing the wharf, was asking 
himself the same question. There was always the doubt 
whether the warning of the Esmeralda telegraphist — 
a fragmentary and interrupted message — had been 
properly understood. However, the good man had 
made up his mind not to go to bed till daylight, if even 
then. He imagined himself to have rendered an enor- 
mous service to Charles Gould. When he thought of 
the saved silver he rubbed his hands together with 
satisfaction. In his simple way he was proud at being 
a party to this extremely clever expedient. It was he 
who had given it a practical shape by suggesting the 
possibility of intercepting at sea the north-bound 
steamer. And it was advantageous to his Company, 
too, which would have lost a valuable freight if the 
treasure had been left ashore to be confiscated. The 
pleasure of disappointing the Monterists was also very 
great. Authoritative by temperament and the long 
habit of command. Captain Mitchell was no democrat. 
He even went so far as to profess a contempt for 
parliamentarism itself. “His Excellency Don Vincente 
Ribiera,” he used to say, “whom I and that fellow of 
mine, Nostromo, had the honour, sir, and the pleasure 
of saving from a cruel death, deferred too much to his 
Congress. It was a mistake — a distinct mistake, sir.’’ 

The guileless old seaman superintending the O.S.N. 
service imagined that the last three days had exhausted 
every startling surprise the political life of Costaguana 
could offer. He used to confess afterwards that the 


323 


NOSTROMO 


324 

events which followed surpassed his imagination. To 
begin with, Sulaco (because of the seizure of the cables 
and the disorganization of the steam service) remained 
for a whole fortnight cut off from the rest of the world 
like a besieged city. 

“One would not have believed it possible; but so it 
was, sir. A full fortnight.” 

The account of the extraordinary things that hap- 
pened during that time, and the powerful emotions he 
experienced, acquired a comic impressiveness from the 
pompous manner of his personal narrative. He opened 
it always by assuring his hearer that he was “in the 
thick of things from first to last.” Then he would be- 
gin by describing the getting away of the silver, and his 
natural anxiety lest “his fellow” in charge of the lighter 
should make some mistake. Apart from the loss of 
so much precious metal, the life of Senor Martin De- 
coud, an agreeable, wealthy, and well-informed young 
gentleman, would have been jeopardized through his 
falling into the hands of his political enemies. Cap- 
tain Mitchell also admitted that in his solitary vigil on 
the wharf he had felt a certain measure of concern for 
the future of the whole country. 

“A feeling, sir,” he explained, “perfectly com- 
prehensible in a man properly grateful for the many 
kindnesses received from the best families of merchants 
and other native gentlemen of independent means, who, 
barely saved by us from the excesses of the mob, seemed, 
to my mind’s eye, destined to become the prey in person 
and fortune of the native soldiery, which, as is well 
known, behave with regrettable barbarity to the in- 
habitants during their civil commotions. And then, 
sir, there were the Goulds, for both of whom, man and 
wife, I could not but entertain the warmest feelings 
deserved by their hospitality and kindness. I felt, too. 


325 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 

the dangers of the gentlemen of the Amarilla Club, who 
I had made me honorary member, and had treated me 
with uniform regard and civility, both in my capacity 
of Consular Agent and as Superintendent of an im- 
portant Steam Service. Miss Antonia Avellanos, 
the most beautiful and accomplished young lady whom 
it had ever been my privilege to speak to, was not a 
little in my mincj, I confess. How the interests of my 
Company would be affected by the impending change 
of officials claimed a large share of my attention, too. 
In short, sir, I was extremely anxious and very tired, as 
you may suppose, by the exciting and memorable events 
I in which I had taken my little part. The Company’s 
I building containing my residence was within five 
^ minutes’ walk, with the attraction of some supper and of 
my hammock (I always take my nightly rest in a ham- 
j mock, as the most suitable to the climate); but some- 
how, sir, though evidently I could do nothing for any 
one by remaining about, I could not tear myself away 
from that wharf, where the fatigue made me stumble 
painfully at times. The night was excessively dark — 
the darkest I remember in my life; so that I began to 
think that the arrival of the transport from Esmeralda 
could not possibly take place before daylight, owing 
to the difficulty of navigating the gulf. The mosquitpes 
bit like fury. We have been infested here with mos- 
quitoes before the late improvements; a peculiar har- 
bour brand, sir, renowned for its ferocity. They were 
like a cloud about my head, and I shouldn’t wonder 
that but for their attacks I would have dozed off as I 
walked up and down, and got a heavy fall. I kept on 
smoking cigar after cigar, more to protect myself from 
being eaten up alive than from any real relish for the 
weed. Then, sir, when perhaps for the twentieth time 
I was approaching my watch to the lighted end in order 


326 


NOSTROMO 


to see the time, and observing with surprise that it 
wanted yet ten minutes to midnight, I heard the splash 
of a ship’s propeller — an unmistakable sound to a 
sailor’s ear on such a calm night. It was faint indeed, 
because they were advancing with precaution and dead 
slow, both on account of the darkness and from their 
desire of not revealing too soon their presence: a very 
unnecessary care, because, I verily believe, in all the 
enormous extent of this harbour I was the only living 
soul about. Even the usual staff of watchmen and 
others had been absent from their posts for several 
nights owing to the disturbances. I stood stock still, 
after dropping and stamping out my cigar — a circum- 
stance highly agreeable, I should think, to the mosqui- 
toes, if I may judge from the state of my face next morn- 
ing. But that was a trifling inconvenience in com- 
parison with the brutal proceedings I became victim of 
on the part of Sotillo. Something utterly inconceiv- 
able, sir; more like the proceedings of a maniac than the 
action of a sane man, however lost to all sense of honour 
and decency. But Sotillo was furious at the failure of 
his thievish scheme.” 

In this Captain Mitchell was right. Sotillo was in- 
deed infuriated. Captain Mitchell, however, had not 
been arrested at once; a vivid curiosity induced him to 
remain on the wharf (which is nearly four hundred feet 
long) to see, or rather hear, the whole process of dis- 
embarkation. Concealed by the railway truck used 
for the silver, which had been run back afterwards to 
the shore end of the jetty. Captain Mitchell saw the 
small detachment thrown forward, pass by, taking 
different directions upon the plain. Meantime, the 
troops were being landed and formed into a column, 
whose head crept up gradually so close to him that he 
made it out, barring nearly the whole width of the 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 327 

wharf, only a very few yards from him. Then the low, 
shuffling, murmuring, clinking sounds ceased, and the 
whole mass remained for about an hour motionless and 
silent, awaiting the return of the scouts. On land 
nothing was to be heard except the deep baying of the 
mastiffs at the railway yards, answered by the faint 
barking of the curs infesting the outer limits of the 
town. A detached knot of dark shapes stood in front of 
the head of the column. 

Presently the picket at the end of the wharf began to 
challenge in undertones single figures approaching from 
the plain. Those messengers sent back from the scout- 
ing parties flung to their comrades brief sentences and 
passed on rapidly, becoming lost in the great motionless 
mass, to make their report to the Staff. It occurred to 
Captain Mitchell that his position could become dis- 
agreeable and perhaps dangerous, when suddenly, at 
the head of the jetty, there was a shout of command, a 
bugle call, followed by a stir and a rattling of arms, and a 
murmuring noise that ran right up the column. Near 
by a loud voice directed hurriedly, “Push that railway 
car out of the way!” At the rush of bare feet to exe- 
cute the order Captain Mitchell skipped back a pace or 
two; the car, suddenly impelled by many hands, flew 
away from him along the rails, and before he knew what 
had happened he found himself surrounded and seized 
by his arms and the collar of his coat. 

“We have caught a man hiding here, mi tenienteV^ 
cried one of his captors. 

“Hold him on one side till the rearguard comes 
along,” answered the voice. The whole column 
streamed past Captain Mitchell at a run, the thunder- 
ing noise of their feet dying away suddenly on the shore. 
His captors held him tightly, disregarding his declara- 
tion that he was an Englishman and his loud demands to 


328 


NOSTROMO 


be taken at once before their commanding officer. 
Finally he lapsed into dignified silence. With a hollow 
rumble of wheels on the planks a couple of field guns, 
dragged by hand, rolled by. Then, after a small body 
of men had marched past escorting four or five figures 
which walked in advance, with a jingle of steel scab- 
bards, he felt a tug at his arms, and was ordered to come 
along. During the passage from the wharf to the 
Custom House it is to be feared that Captain Mitchell 
was subjected to certain indignities at the hands of the 
soldiers — such as jerks, thumps on the neck, forcible 
application of the butt of a rifle to the small of his back. 
Their ideas of speed were not in accord with his notion 
of his dignity. He became flustered, flushed, and help- 
less. It was as if the world were coming to an end. 

The long building was surrounded by troops, which 
were already piling arms by companies and preparing 
to pass the night lying on the ground in their ponchos 
with their sacks under their heads. Corporals moved 
with swinging lanterns posting sentries all round the 
walls wherever there was a door or an opening. Sotillo 
was taking his measures to protect his conquest as if 
it had indeed contained the treasure. His desire to 
make his fortune at one audacious stroke of genius had 
overmastered his reasoning faculties. He would not 
believe in the possibility of failure; the mere hint of 
such a thing made his brain reel with rage. Every 
circumstance pointing to it appeared incredible. The 
statement of Hirsch, which was so absolutely fatal to his 
hopes, could by no means be admitted. It is true, too, 
that Hirsch’s story had been told so incoherently, with 
such excessive signs of distraction, that it really looked 
improbable. It was extremely difficult, as the saying 
is, to make head or tail of it. On the bridge of the 
steamer, directly after his rescue, Sotillo and his officers. 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


329 


in their impatience and excitement, would not give 
the wretched man time to collect such few wits as re- 
mained to him. He ought to have been quieted, 
soothed, and reassured, whereas he had been roughly 
handled, cuffed, shaken, and addressed in menacing 
tones. His struggles, his wriggles, his attempts to get 
down on his knees, followed by the most violent efforts 
to break away, as if he meant incontinently to jump 
overboard, his shrieks and shrinkings and cowering 
wild glances had filled them first with amazement, then 
with a doubt of his genuineness, as men are wont to sus- 
pect the sincerity of every great passion. His Spanish, 
too, became so mixed up with German that the better 
half of his statements remained incomprehensible. He 
tried to propitiate them by calling them hochwohlge- 
horen herren, which in itself sounded suspicious. When 
admonished sternly not to trifle he repeated his en- 
treaties and protestations of loyalty and innocence again 
in German, obstinately, because he was not aware in 
what language he was speaking. His identity, of 
course, was perfectly known as an inhabitant of Es- 
meralda, but this made the matter no clearer. As he 
kept on forgetting Decoud’s name, mixing him up with 
several other people he had seen in the Casa Gould, it 
looked as if they all had been in the lighter together; 
and for a moment Sotillo thought that he had drowned 
every prominent Ribierist of Sulaco. The improb- 
ability of such a thing threw a doubt upon the whole 
statement. Hirsch was either mad or playing a part — 
pretending feg-r and distraction on the spur of the mo- 
ment to cover the truth. Sotillo’ s rapacity, excited to 
the highest pitch by the prospect of an immense booty, 
could believe in nothing adverse. This Jew might have 
been very much frightened by the accident, but he 
knew where the silver was concealed, and had invented 


330 


NOSTROMO 


this story, with his Jewish cunning, to put him entirely 
off the track as to what had been done. 

Sotillo had taken up his quarters on the upper floor 
in a vast apartment with heavy black beams. But 
there was no ceiling, and the eye lost itself in the dark- 
ness under the high pitch of the roof. The thick shut- 
ters stood open. On a long table could be seen a large 
inkstand, some stumpy, inky quill pens, and two 
square wooden boxes, each holding half a hundred- 
weight of sand. Sheets of grey coarse official paper 
bestrewed the floor. It must have been a room oc- 
cupied by some higher official of the Customs, because 
a large leathern armchair stood behind the table, 
with other high-backed chairs scattered about; A net 
hammock was swung under one of the beams — for the 
official’s afternoon siesta, no doubt. A couple of 
candles stuck into tall iron candlesticks gave a dim 
reddish light. The colonel’s hat, sword, and revolver 
lay between them, and a couple of his more trusty 
officers lounged gloomily against the table. The 
colonel threw himself into the armchair, and a big 
negro with a sergeant’s stripes on his ragged sleeve, 
kneeling down, pulled off his boots. Sotillo’s ebony 
moustache contrasted violently with the livid colouring 
of his cheeks. His eyes were sombre and as if sunk very 
far into his head. He seemed exhausted by his per- 
plexities, languid with disappointment; but when the 
sentry on the landing thrust his head in to announce the 
arrival of a prisoner, he revived at once. 

“Let him be brought in,” he shouted, fiercely. 

The door flew open, and Captain Mitchell, bare- 
headed, his waistcoat open, the bow of his tie under his 
ear, was hustled into the room. 

Sotillo recognized him at once.- He could not have 
hoped for a more precious capture; here was a man who 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


331 


could tell him, if he chose, everything he wished to 
know — and directly the problem of how best to make 
him talk to the point presented itself to his mind. The 
resentment of a foreign nation had no terrors for Sotillo. 
The might of the whole armed Europe would not have 
protected Captain Mitchell from insults and ill-usage, so 
well as the quick reflection of Sotillo that this was an 
Englishman who would most likely turn obstinate under 
bad treatment, and become quite unmanageable. At 
all events, the colonel smoothed the scowl on his brow. 

“What! The excellent Senor Mitchell!” he cried, 
in affected dismay. The pretended anger of his swift 
advance and of his shout, “Release the caballero at 
once,” was so effective that the astounded soldiers 
positively sprang away from their prisoner. Thus 
suddenly deprived of forcible support. Captain Mit- 
chell reeled as though about to fall. Sotillo took him 
familiarly under the arm, led him to a chair, waved his 
hand at the room. “Go out, all of you,” he com- 
manded. 

When they had been left alone he stood looking down, 
irresolute and silent, watching till Captain Mitchell 
had recovered l^s power of speech. 

Here in his very grasp was one of the men concerned 
in the removal of the silver. Sotillo’s temperament was 
of that sort that he experienced an ardent desire to beat 
him; just as formerly when negotiating with difficulty 
a loan from the cautious Anzani, his fingers always 
itched to take the shopkeeper by the throat. As to 
Captain Mitchell, the suddenness, unexpectedness, and 
general inconceivableness of this experience had con- 
fused his thoughts. Moreover, he was physically out 
of breath. 

“IVe been knocked down three times between this 
and the wharf,” he gasped out at last. “Somebody 


832 


NOSTROMO 


shall be made to pay for this.” He had certainly 
stumbled more than once, and had been dragged along 
for some distance before he could regain his i^ride. 
With his recovered breath his indignation seemed to 
madden him. He jumped up, crimson, all his white 
hair bristling, his eyes glaring vengefully, and shook 
violently the flaps of his ruined waistcoat before the 
disconcerted Sotillo. “Look! Those uniformed thieves 
of yours downstairs have robbed me of my watch.” 

The old sailor’s aspect was very threatening. Sotillo 
saw himself cut off from the table on which his sabre and 
revolver were lying. 

“I demand restitution and apologies,” Mitchell 
thundered at him, quite beside himself. “From you! 
Yes, from you ! ” 

For the space of a second or so the colonel stood with 
a perfectly stony expression of face; then, as Captain 
Mitchell flung out an arm towards the table as if to 
snatch up the revolver, Sotillo, with a yell of alarm, 
bounded to the door and was gone in a flash, slamming 
it after him. Surprise calmed Captain Mitchell’s fury. 
Behind the closed door Sotillo shouted on the landing, 
and there was a great tumult of feet^on the wooden 
staircase. 

“Disarm him! Bind him!” the colonel could be 
heard vociferating. 

Captain Mitchell had just the time to glance once 
at the windows, with three perpendicular bars of iron 
each and some twenty feet from the ground, as he well 
knew, before the door flew open and the rush upon him 
took place. In an incredibly short time he found him- 
self bound with many turns of a hide rope to a high- 
backed chair, so that his head alone remained free. Not 
till then did Sotillo, who had been leaning in the door- 
way trembling visibly, venture again within. Tbf» 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 333 

soldiers, picking up from the floor the rifles they had 
dropped^ to grapple with the prisoner, filed out of the 
room. The officers remained leaning on their swords 
and looking on. 

The watch! the watch! raved the colonel, pacing 
to and fro like a tiger in a cage. “Give me that man’s 
watch.” 

It was true, that when searched for arms in the hall 
downstairs, before being taken into Sotillo’s presence. 
Captain Mitchell had been relieved of his watch and 
chain; but at the colonel’s clamour it was produced 
quickly enough, a corporal bringing it up, carried care- 
fully in the palms of his joined hands. Sotillo snatched 
it, and pushed the clenched fist from which it dangled 
close to Captain Mitchell’s face. 

“Now then! You arrogant Englishman! You dare 
to call the soldiers of the army thieves! Behold your 
watch.” 

He flourished his fist as if aiming blows at the priso- 
ner’s nose. Captain Mitchell, helpless as a swathed 
infant, looked anxiously at the sixty-guinea gold half- 
chronometer, presented to him years ago by a Com- 
mittee of Underwriters for saving a ship from total loss 
by fire. Sotillo, too, seemed to perceive its valuable 
appearance. He became silent suddenly, stepped aside 
to the table, and began a careful examination in the 
light of the candles. He had never seen anything so 
fine. His oflicers closed in and craned their necks be- 
hind his back. 

He became so interested that for an instant he forgot 
his precious prisoner. There is always something 
childish in the rapacity of the passionate, clear-minded. 
Southern races, wanting in the misty idealism of the 
Northerners, who at the smallest encouragement dream 
of nothing less than the conquest of the earth. Sotillo 


334 


NOSTROMO 


was fond of jewels, gold trinkets, of personal adornment. 
After a moment he turned about, and with a command- 
ing gesture made all his officers fall back. He laid 
down the watch on the table, then, negligently, pushed 
his hat over it. 

“Ha!” he began, going up very close to the chair. 
“You dare call my valiant soldiers of the Esmeralda 
regiment, thieves. You dare! What impudence ! You 
foreigners come here to rob our country of its wealth. 
You never have enough! Your audacity knows no 
bounds.” 

He looked towards the officers, amongst whom there 
was an approving murmur. The older major was 
moved to declare — 

“Si, mi colonel. They are all traitors.” 

“I shall say nothing,” continued Sotillo, fixing the 
motionless and powerless Mitchell with an angry but 
uneasy stare. “I shall say nothing of your treacherous 
attempt to get possession of my revolver to shoot 
me while I was trying to treat you with considera- 
tion you did not deserve. You have forfeited your 
life. Your only hope is in my clemency.” 

He watched for the effect of his words, but there was 
no obvious sign of fear on Captain Mitchell’s face. His 
white hair was full of dust, which covered also the rest 
of his helpless person. As if he had heard nothing, he 
twitched an eyebrow to get rid of a bit of straw which 
hung amongst the hairs. 

Sotillo advanced one leg and put his arms akimbo. 
“It is you, Mitchell,” he said, emphatically, “who are 
the thief, not my soldiers!” He pointed at his prisoner 
a forefinger with a long, almond-shaped nail. “ Where 
is the silver of the San Tome mine.^ I ask you, Mitchell, 
where is the silver that was deposited in this Custom 
House.^ Answer me that! You stole it. You were a 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


335 


Iparty to stealing it. It was stolen from the Government. 
I Aha ! you think I do not know what I say ; but I am up 
Ito your foreign tricks. It is gone, the silver! No? 
Gone in one of your lanchas, you miserable man If How 
dared you?’’ 

This time he produced his effect. “How on earth 
* could Sotillo know that? ” thought Mitchell. His head, 
the only part of his body that could move, betrayed his 
I surprise by a sudden jerk. 

“Ha! you tremble,” Sotillo shouted, suddenly. “It 
i is a conspiracy. It is a crime against the State. Did 
i you not know that the silver belongs to the Republic till 
the Government claims are satisfied? Where is it? 
Where have you hidden it, you miserable thief?” 
j At this question Captain Mitchell’s sinking spirits re- 
vived. In whatever incomprehensible manner Sotillo 
had already got his information about the lighter, }ie had 
not captured it. That was clear. In his outraged 
heart. Captain Mitchell had resolved that nothing 
would induce him to say a word while he remained so 
disgracefully bound, but his desire to help the escape of 
the silver made him depart from this resolution. His 
wits were very much at work. He detected in Sotillo a 
certain air of doubt, of irresolution. 

“That man,” he said to himself, “is not certain of 
what he advances.” For all his pomposity in social 
intercourse. Captain Mitchell could meet the realities of 
life in a resolute and ready spirit. Now he had got over 
the first shock of the abominable treatment he was cool 
and collected enough. The immense contempt he felt 
for Sotillo steadied him, and he said oracularly, “No 
doubt it is well concealed by this time.” 

Sotillo, too, had time to cool down. '' Muy hien, 
Mitchell,” he said in a cold and threatening manner. 
“But can you produce the Government receipt for the 


336 


NOSTROMO 


royalty and the Custom House permit of embarkation, 
hey? Can you? No. Then the silver has been re- 
moved illegally, and the guilty shall be made to suffer, 
unless it is produced within five days from this.’’ He 
gave orders for the prisoner to be unbound and locked 
up in one of the smaller rooms downstairs. He walked 
about the room, moody and silent, till Captain Mitchell, 
with each of his arms held by a couple of men, stood up, 
shook himself, and stamped his feet. 

“How did you like to be tied up, Mitchell? ” he asked, 
derisively. 

“It is the most incredible, abominable use of power!” 
Captain Mitchell declared in a loud voice. “And 
whatever your purpose, you shall gain nothing from it, 
I can promise you.” 

The tall colonel, livid, with his coal-black ringlets and 
moustache, crouched, as it were, to look into the eyes of 
the short, thick-set, red-faced prisoner with rumpled 
white hair. 

“That we shall see. You shall know my power a 
little better when I tie you up to a potalon outside in the 
sun for a whole day.” He drew himself up haughtily, 
and made a sign for Captain Mitchell to be led away. 

“What about my watch?” cried Captain Mitchell, 
hanging back from the efforts of the men pulling him 
towards the door. 

Sotillo turned to his officers. “No! But only listen 
to this picaro, Caballeros,” he pronounced with affected 
scorn, and was answered by a chorus of derisive laugh- 
ter. “He demands his watch!” . . . He ran up 

again to Captain Mitchell, for the desire to relieve his 
feelings by inflicting blows and pain upon this English- 
man was very strong within him. “Your watch! You 
are a prisoner in war time, Mitchell! In war time! 
You have no rights and no property! Caramha! The 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 337 

very breath in your body belongs to me. Remember 
that.” 

“Bosh!” said Captain Mitchell, concealing a dis- 
I agreeable impression. 

I Down below, in a great hall, with the earthen floor 
1 and with a tall mound thrown up by white ants in a 
; corner, the soldiers had kindled a small fire with broken 
^ chairs and tables near the arched gateway, through 
which the faint murmur of the harbour waters on the 
I beach could be heard. While Captain Mitchell was 
being led down the staircase, an officer passed him, 

I running up to report to Sotillo the capture of more 
prisoners. A lot of smoke hung about in the vast 
I gloomy place, the fire crackled, and, as if through a 
haze. Captain Mitchell made out, surrounded by short 
soldiers with fixed bayonets, the heads of three tall 
prisoners — the doctor, the engineer-in-chief, and the 
white leonine mane of old Viola, who stood half-turned 
away from the others with his chin on his breast and his 
arms crossed. Mitchell’s astonishment knew no 
bounds. He cried out; the other two exclaimed also. 
But he hurried on, diagonally, across the big cavern- 
like hall. Lots of thoughts, surmises, hints of caution, 
and so on, crowded his head to distraction. 

“Is he actually keeping you?” shouted the chief 
engineer, whose single eyeglass glittered in the firelight. 

An officer from the top of the stairs was shouting 
urgently, “Bring them all up — all three.” 

In the clamour of voices and the rattle of arms, Cap- 
tain Mitchell made himself heard imperfectly: “By 
heavens! the fellow has stolen my watch.” 

The engineer-in-chief on the staircase resisted the 
pressure Ipng enough to shout, “What? What did you 
say?” 

“My chronometer!” Captain Mitchell yelled, vio- 


338 


NOSTROMO 


lently at the very moment of being thrust head fore- 
most through a small door into a sort of cell, perfectly 
black, and so narrow that he fetched up against the 
opposite wall. The door had been instantly slammed. 
He knew where they had put him. This was the strong 
room of the Custom House, whence the silver had been 
removed only a few hours earlier. It was almost as 
narrow as a corridor, with a small square aperture, 
barred by a heavy grating, at the distant end. Captain 
Mitchell staggered for a few steps, then sat down on the 
earthen floor with his back to the wall. Nothing, not 
even a gleam of light from anywhere, interfered with 
Captain Mitchell’s meditation. He did some hard 
but not very extensive thinking. It was not of a 
gloomy cast. The old sailor, with all his small weak- 
nesses and absurdities, was constitutionally incapable 
of entertaining for any length of time a fear of his per- 
sonal safety. It was not so much firmness of soul as the 
lack of a certain kind of imagination — the kind whose 
undue development caused intense suffering to Senor 
Hirsch; that sort of imagination which adds the blind 
terror of bodily suffering and of death, envisaged as an 
accident to the body alone, strictly — to all the other 
apprehensions on which the sense of one’s existence is 
based. Unfortunately, Captain Mitchell had not much 
penetration of any kind; characteristic, illuminating 
trifles of expression, action, or movement, escaped him 
completely. He was too pompously and innocently [ 
aware of his own existence to observe that of others. 
For instance, he could not believe that Sotillo had been I 
really afraid of him, and this simply because it would I 
never have entered into his head to shoot any one ’ 
except in the most pressing case of self-defence. Any- 
body could see he was not a murdering kind of man, he 
reflected quite gravely. Then why this preposterous 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


339 


and insulting charge? he asked himself. But his 
thoughts mainly clung around the astounding and un- 
answerable question : How the devil the fellow got to 
know that the silver had gone off in the lighter? It was 
obvious that he had not captured it. And, obviously, 
he could not have captured it! In this last conclusion 
Captain Mitchell was misled by the assumption drawn 
from his observation of the weather during his long 
vigil on the wharf. He thought that there had been 
much more wind than usual that night in the gulf; 
whereas, as a matter of fact, the reverse was the case. 

“How in the name of all that’s marvellous did that 
confounded fellow get wind of the affair?” was the first 
question he asked directly after the bang, clatter, and 
flash of the open door (which was closed again almost 
before he could lift his dropped head) informed him that 
he had a companion of captivity. Dr. Monygham’s 
voice stopped muttering curses in English and Spanish. 

“ Is that you, Mitchell? ” he made answer, surlily. “ I 
struck my forehead against this confounded wall with 
enough force to fell an ox. Where are you?” 

Captain Mitchell, accustomed to the darkness, could 
make out the doctor stretching out his hands blindly. 

“I am sitting here on the floor. Don’t fall over my 
legs,” Captain Mitchell’s voice announced with great 
dignity of tone. The doctor, entreated not to walk 
about in the dark, sank down to the ground, too. The 
two prisoners of Sotillo, with their heads nearly touch- 
ing, began to exchange confidences. 

“Yes,” the doctor related in a low tone to Captain 
Mitchell’s vehement curiosity, “we have been nabbed 
in old Viola’s place. It seems that one of their pickets, 
commanded by an oflScer, pushed as far as the town 
gate. They had orders not to enter, but to bring along 
every soul they could find on the plain. We had been 


340 


NOSTROMO 


talking in there with the door open, and no doubt they 
saw the glimmer of our light. They must have been 
making their approaches for some time. The engineer 
laid himself on a bench in a recess by the fire-place, and 
I went upstairs to have a look. I hadn’t heard any 
sound from there for a long time. Old Viola, as soon as 
he saw me come up, lifted his arm for silence. I stole in 
on tiptoe. By Jove, his wife was lying down and had 
gone to sleep. ' The woman had actually dropped off to 
sleep! ‘Senor Doctor,’ Viola whispers to me, ‘it looks 
as if her oppression was going to get better.’ ‘Yes,’ I 
said, very much surprised; ‘your wife is a wonderful 
woman, Giorgio.’ Jiist then a shot was fired in the 
kitchen, which made us jump and cower as if at a thun- 
der-clap. It seems that the' party of soldiers had 
stolen quite close up, and one of them had crept up to 
the door. He looked in, thought there was no one there, 
and, holding his rifle ready, entered quietly. The chief 
told me that he had just closed his eyes for a moment. 
When he opened them, he saw the man already in the 
middle of the room peering into the dark corners. The 
chief was so startled that, without thinking, he made 
one leap from the recess right but in front of the fire- 
place. The soldier, no less startled, up with his rifle 
and pulls the trigger, deafening and singeing the engi- 
neer, but in his flurry missing him completely. But, 
look what happens! At the noise of the report the 
sleeping woman sat up, as if moved by a spring, with a 
shriek, ‘The children, Gian’ Battista! Save the chil- 
dren !’ I have it in my ears now. It was the truest cry 
of distress I ever heard. I stood as if paralyzed, but 
the old husband ran across to the bedside, stretching out ' 
his hands. She clung to them! I could see her eyes 
go glazed; the old fellow lowered her down on the pil- 
lows and then looked round at me. She was dead! 


I THE LIGHTHOUSE 341 

I All this took less than five minutes, and then I ran* down 
[to see what was the matter. It was no use thinking of 
jj any resistance. Nothing we two could say availed with 
! the officer, so I volunteered to go up with a couple of 

( soldiers and fetch down old Viola. He was sitting at 
the foot of the bed, looking at his wife’s face, and did not 
seem to hear what I said; but after I had pulled the 
sheet over her head, he got up and followed us down- 
1 stairs quietly, in a sort of thoughtful way. They 
I marched us off along the road, leaving the door open 
: and the candle burning. The chief engineer strode on 
i without a word, but I looked back once or twice at the 
feeble gleam. After we had gone some considerable 
distance, the Garibaldino, who was walking by my side, 
suddenly said, T have buried many men on battlefields 
on this continent. The priests talk of consecrated 
■ground! Bah! All the earth made by God is holy; 
but the sea, which knows nothing of kings and priests 
and tyrants, is the holiest of all. Doctor ! I should like 
to bury her in the sea. No mummeries, candles, in- 
cense, no holy water mumbled over by priests. The 
spirit of liberty is upon the waters.’ . . . Amaz- 

ing old man. He was saying all this in an undertone 
as if talking to himself.” 

“Yes, yes,” interrupted Captain Mitchell, impa- 
tiently. “Poor old chap! But have you any idea how 
that ruffian Sotillo obtained his information.? He did not 
get hold of any of our Cargadores who helped with the 
truck, did he.? But no, it is impossible! These were 
picked men we’ve had in our boats for these five years, 
and I paid them myself specially for the job, with in- 
structions to keep out of the way for twenty-four hours at 
least. I saw them with my own eyes march on with the 
Italians to the railway yards. The chief promised to give 
them rations as long as they wanted to remain there.” 


342 


NOSTROMO 


“ Wdl,” said the doctor, slowly, “I can tell you that 
you may say good-bye for ever to your best lighter, and 
to the Capataz of Cargadores.” 

At this. Captain Mitchell scrambled up to his feet in 
the excess of his excitement. The doctor, without giv- 
ing him time to exclaim, stated briefly the part played 
by Hirsch during the night. 

Captain Mitchell was overcome. “Drowned!” he 
muttered, in a bewildered and appalled whisper. 
“Drowned!” Afterwards he kept still, apparently 
listening, but too absorbed in the news of the catas- 
trophe to follow the doctor’s narrative with attention. 

The doctor had taken up an attitude of perfect 
ignorance, till at last Sotillo was induced to have 
Hirsch brought in to repeat the whole story, which was 
got out of him again with the greatest diflSculty, be- 
cause every moment he would break out into lamenta- 
tions. At last, Hirsch was led away, looking more dead 
than alive, and shut up in one of the upstairs rooms to 
be close at hand. Then the doctor, keeping up his 
character of a man not admitted to the inner councils of 
the San Tome Administration, remarked that the story 
sounded incredible. Of course, he said, he couldn’t 
tell what had been the action of the Europeans, as he 
had been exclusively occupied with his own work in 
looking after the wounded, and also in attending Don 
Jose Avellanos. He had succeeded in assuming so well 
a tone of impartial indifference, that Sotillo seemed 
to be completely deceived. Till then a show of regular 
inquiry had been kept up; one of the oflScers sitting at 
the table wrote down the questions and the answers, the 
others, lounging about the room, listened attentively, 
puflSng at their long cigars and keeping their eyes on the 
doctor. But at that point Sotillo ordered everybody 
out. 


CHAPTER THREE 


Directly they were alone, the colonel’s severe official 
manner changed. He rose and approached the doctor. 
His eyes shone with rapacity and hope; he became con- 
fidential. “The silver might have been indeed put on 
board the lighter, but it was not conceivable that it 
should have been taken out to sea.” The doctor, 
watching every word, nodded slightly, smoking with 
apparent relish the cigar which Sotillo had offered him 
as a sign of his friendly intentions. The doctor’s 
manner of cold detachment from the rest of the Euro- 
peans led Sotillo oh, till, from conjecture to conjecture, 
he arrived at hinting that in his opinion this was a put- 
up job on the part of Charles Gould, in order to get hold 
of that immense treasure all to himself. The doctor, 
observant and self-possessed, muttered, “He is very 
capable of that.” ^ 

Here Captain Mitchell exclaimed with amazement, 
amusement, and indignation, “You said that of Charles 
Gould!” N Disgust, and even some suspicion, crept into 
his tone, for to him, too, as to other Europeans, there ap- 
peared to be something dubious about the doctor’s 
personality. 

“What on earth made you say that to this watch- 
stealing scoundrel.^” he asked. “What’s the object of 
an infernal lie of that sort.? That confounded pick- 
pocket was quite capable of believing you.” 

He snorted. For a time the doctor remained silent 
in the dark. 

“Yes, that is exactly what I did say,” he uttered at 
343 


344 


NOSTROMO 


last, in a tone which would have made it clear enough 
to a third party that the pause was not of a reluctant but 
of a reflective character. Captain Mitchell thought 
that he had never heard anything so brazenly impudent 
in his life. 

“Well, well!” he muttered to himself, but he had not 
the heart to voice his thoughts. They were swept 
away by others full of astonishment and regret. A 
heavy sense of discomflture crushed him : the loss of the 
silver, the death of Nostromo, which was really quite a 
blow to his sensibilities, because he had become attached 
to his Capataz as people get attached to their inferiors 
from love of ease and almost unconscious gratitude. 
And when he thought of Decoud being drowned, too, his 
sensibility was almost overcome by this miserable end. 
What a heavy blow for that poor young woman ! Cap- 
tain Mitchell did not belong to the species of crabbed 
old bachelors; on the contrary, he liked to see young 
men paying attentions to young women. It seemed to 
him a natural and proper thing. Proper especially. 
As to sailors, it was different; it was not their place to 
marry, he maintained, but it was on moral grounds as a 
matter of self-denial, for, he explained, life on board 
ship, is not fit for a woman even at best, and if you leave 
her on shore, first of all it is not fair, and next she either 
suffers from it or doesn’t care a bit, which, in both cases, 
is bad. He couldn’t have told what upset him most — 
Charles Gould’s immense material loss, the death of 
Nostromo, which was a heavy loss to himself, or the 
idea of that beautiful and accomplished young woman 
being plunged into mourning. 

“Yes,” the doctor, who had been apparently reflect- 
ing some more, began again, “he believed me right 
enough. I thought he would have hugged me. ‘Si, si,’ 
he said, ‘he will write to that partner of his, the rich 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 345 

Americano in San Francisco, that it is all lost. Why 
not? There is enough to share with many people.’” 

“But this is perfectly imbecile!” cried Captain 
Mitchell. 

The doctor remarked that Sotillo was imbecile, and 
that his imbecility was ingenious enough to lead him com- 
pletely astray. He had helped him only but a little way. 

“I mentioned,” the dokor said, “in a sort of casual 
way, that treasure is generally buried in the earth 
rather than being set afloat upon the sea. At this my 
Sotillo slapped his forehead. ‘Por Dios, yes,’ he said; 
‘they must have buried it on the shores of this harbour 
somewhere before they sailed out.’” 

“Heavens and earth!” muttered Captain Mitchell, 
“I should not have believed that anybody could be ass 

enough He paused, then went on mournfully: 

“But what’s the good of all this? It would have been 
a clever enough lie if the lighter had been still afloat. It 
would have kept that inconceivable idiot perhaps from 
sending out the steamer to cruise in the gulf. That was 
the danger that worried me no end.” Captain Mitchell 
sighed profoundly. 

“I had an object,” the doctor pronounced, slowly. 

“Had you?” muttered Captain Mitchell. “Well, 
that’s lucky, or else I would have thought that you 
went on fooling him for the fun of the thing. And per- 
haps that was your object. Well, I must say I per- 
sonally wouldn’t condescend to that sort of thing. It is 
not to my taste. No, no. Blackening a friend’s 
character is not my idea of fun, if it were to fool the 
greatest blackguard on earth.” 

Had it not been for Captain Mitchell’s depression, 
caused by the fatal news, his disgust of Dr. Monygham 
would have taken a more outspoken shape; but he 
thought to himself that now it really did not matter 


346 NOSTROMO 

what that man, whom he had never liked, would say 
and do. 

“I wonder,” he grumbled, “why they have shut us 
up together, or why Sotillo should have shut you up at 
all, since it seems to me you have been fairly chummy up 
there?” 

“Yes, I wonder?” said the doctor, grimly. 

Captain Mitchell’s heart was so heavy that he would 
have preferred for the time being a complete solitude to 
the best of company. But any company would have 
been preferable to the doctor’s, at whom he had always 
looked askance as a sort of beachcomber of superior 
intelligence partly reclaimed from his abased state. 
That feeling led him to ask — 

“What has that ruffian done with the other two?” 

“ The chief engineer he would have let go in any case,” 
said the doctor. “He wouldn’t like to have a quarrel 
with the railway upon his hands. Not just yet, at any 
rate. I don’t think. Captain Mitchell, that you under- 
stand exactly what Sotillo’s position is ” 

“I don’t see why I should bother my head about it,” 
snarled Captain Mitchell. 

“No,” assented the doctor, with the same grim com- 
posure. “I don’t see why you should. It wouldn’t 
help a single human being in the world if you thought 
ever so hard upon any subject whatever.” 

“No,” said Captain Mitchell, simply, and with 
evident depression. “ A man locked up in a confounded 
dark hole is not much use to anybody.” 

“As to old Viola,” the doctor continued, as though 
he had not heard, “Sotillo released him for the same 
reason he is presently going to release you.” 

“Eh? What?” exclaimed Captain Mitchell, staring 
like an owl in the darkness. “ What is there in common 
between me and old Viola? More likely because the 


347 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 

old chap has no watch and chain for the pickpocket to 
steal. And I tell you what, Dr. Monygham,” he went 
on with rising choler, “he will find it more difficult than 
he thinks to get rid of me. He will burn his fingers over 
that job yet, I can tell you. To begin with, I won’t go 
without my watch, and as to the rest — we shall see. I 
dare say it is no great matter for you to be locked up. 
But Joe Mitchell is a different kind of man, sir. I 
don’t mean to submit tamely to insult and robbery. I 
am a public character, sir.” 

And then Captain Mitchell became aware that the 
bars of the opening had become visible, a black grating 
upon a square of grey. The coming of the day silenced 
Captain Mitchell as if by the reflection that now in all 
the future days he would be deprived of the invaluable 
services of his Capataz. He leaned against the wall 
with his arms folded on his breast, and the doctor 
walked up and down the whole length of the place 
with his peculiar hobbling gait, as if slinking about on 
damaged feet. At the end furthest from the grating he 
would be lost altogether in the darkness. Only the 
slight limping shuffle could be heard. There was an air 
of moody detachment in that painful prowl kept up 
without a pause. When the door of the prison was 
suddenly flung open and his name shouted out he 
showed no surprise. He swerved sharply in his walk, 
and passed out at once, as though much depended upon 
his speed; but Captain Mitchell remained for some 
time with his shoulders against the wall, quite undecided 
in the bitterness of his spirit whether it wouldn’t be 
better to refuse to stir a limb in the way of protest. He 
had half a mind to get himself carried out, but after the 
officer at the door had shouted three or four times in 
tones of remonstrance and surprise he condescended to 
walk out. 


348 


NOSTROMO 


Sotillo’s manner had changed. The coloneFs off- 
hand civility was slightly irresolute, as though he were in 
doubt if civility were the proper course in this case. He 
observed Captain Mitchell attentively before he spoke 
from the big armchair behind the table in a condescend- 
ing voice — 

“ I have concluded not to detain you, Senor Mitchefl. 
I am of a forgiving disposition. I make allowances. 
Let this be a lesson to you, however.” 

The peculiar dawn of.Sulaco, which seems to break 
far away to the westward and creep back into the shade 
of the mountains, mingled with the reddish light of the 
candles. Captain Mitchell, in sign of contempt and 
indifference, let his eyes roam all over the room, and he 
gave a hard stare to the doctor, perched already on the 
casement of one of the windows, with his eyelids 
lowered, careless and thoughtful — or perhaps ashamed. 

Sotillo, ensconced in the vast armchair, remarked, “I 
should have thought that the feelings of a caballero 
would have dictated to you an appropriate reply.” 

He waited for it, but Captain Mitchell remaining 
mute, more from extreme resentment than from 
reasoned intention, Sotillo hesitated, glanced towards 
the doctor, who looked up and nodded, then went on 
with a slight effort — 

“Here, Senor Mitchell, is your watch. Learn how 
hasty and unjust has been your judgment of my 
patriotic soldiers.” 

Lying back in his seat, he extended his arm over the 
table and pushed the watch away slightly. Captain 
Mitchell walked up with undisguised eagerness, put it 
to his ear, then slipped it into his pocket coolly. 

Sotillo seemed to overcome an immense reluctance. 
Again he looked aside at the doctor, who stared at him 
unwinkingly. 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


349 


But as Captain Mitchell was turning away, with- 
out as much as a nod or a glance, he hastened to 
say— 

“You may go and wait downstairs for the sen or doc- 
tor, whom I am going to liberate, too. You foreigners 
are insignificant, to my mind.” 

He forced a slight, discordant laugh out of himself, 
while Captain Mitchell, for the first time, looked at him 
with some interest. 

“The law shall take note later on of your transgres- 
sions,” Sotillo hurried on. “But as for me, you can 
live free, unguarded, unobserved. Do you hear, Seiior 
Mitchell.^ You may depart to your affairs. You are 
beneath my notice. My attention is claimed by mat- 
ters of the very highest importance.” 

Captain Mitchell was very nearly provoked to an 
answer. It displeased him to be liberated insultingly; 
but want of sleep, prolonged anxieties, a profound 
disappointment with the fatal ending of the silver- 
saving business weighed upon his spirits. It was as 
much as he could do to conceal his uneasiness, not 
about himself perhaps, but about things in general. 
It occurred to him distinctly that something under- 
hand was going on. As he went out he ignored the 
doctor pointedly. 

“A brute!” said Sotillo, as the door shut. 

Dr. Monygham slipped off the window-sill, and, 
thrusting his hands into the pockets of the long, grey 
dust coat he was wearing, made a few steps into the 
room. 

Sotillo got up, too, and, putting himself in the way, 
examined him from head to foot. 

“So your countrymen do not confide in you very 
much, senor doctor. They do not love you, eh? Why 
is that, I wonder?” 


S50 


NOSTROMO 


The doctor, lifting his head, answered by a long, life- 
less stare and the words, “Perhaps because I have lived 
too long in Costaguana.” 

Sotillo had a gleam of white teeth under the black 
moustache. 

“Aha! But you love yourself,” he said, encourag- 
ingly. 

“If you leave them alone,” the doctor said, looking 
with the same lifeless stare at Sotillo’s handsome face, 
“they will betray themselves very soon. Meantime, I 
may try to make Don Carlos speak .^” 

“Ah! senor doctor,” said Sotillo, wagging his head, 
“you are a man of quick intelligence. We were made 
to understand each other.” He turned away. He 
could bear no longer that expressionless and motionless 
stare, which seemed to have a sort of impenetrable 
emptiness like the black depth of an abyss. 

Even in a man utterly devoid of moral sense there 
remains an appreciation of rascality which, being con- 
ventional, is perfectly clear. Sotillo thought that Dr. 
Monygham, so different from all Europeans, was ready 
to sell his countrymen and Charles Gould, his employer, 
for some share of the San Tome silver. Sotillo did not 
despise him for that. The colonel’s want of moral 
sense was of a profound and innocent character. It 
bordered upon stupidity, moral stupidity. Nothing 
that served his ends could appear to him really repre- 
hensible. Nevertheless, he despised Dr. Monygham. 
He had for him an immense and satisfactory contempt. 
He despised him with all his heart because he did not 
mean to let the doctor have any reward at all. He 
despised him, not as a man without faith and honour, 
but as a fool. Dr. Monygham’s insight into his 
character had deceived Sotillo completely. Therefore 
he thought the doctor a fool. 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 351 

Since his arrival in Sulaco the colonel’s ideas had 
undergone some modification. 

He no longer wished for a political career in Montero’s 
administration. He had always doubted the safety of 
that course. Since he had learned from the chief 
engineer that at daylight most likely he would be con- 
fronted by Pedro Montero his misgivings on that point 
had considerably increased. The guerrillero brother of 
the general — the Pedrito of popular speech — had a 
reputation of his own. He wasn’t safe to deal with. 
Sotillo had vaguely planned seizing not only the treasure 
but the town itself, and then negotiating at leisure. 
But in the face of facts learned from the chief engineer 
(who had frankly disclosed to him the whole situation) 
his audacity, never of a very dashing kind, had been 
replaced by a most cautious hesitation. 

“An army — an army crossed the mountains under 
Pedrito already,” he had repeated, unable to hide his 
consternation. “ If it had not been that I am given the 
news by a man of your position I would never have 
believed it. Astonishing!” 

“An armed force,” corrected the engineer, suavely. 

His aim was attained. It was to keep Sulaco clear of 
any armed occupation for a few hours longer, to let 
those whom fear impelled leave the town. In the 
general dismay there were families hopeful enough to 
fly upon the road towards Los Hatos, which was left open 
by the withdrawal of the armed rabble under Senores 
Fuentes and Gamacho, to Rincon, with their enthusias- 
tic welcome for Pedro Montero. It was a hasty and 
risky exodus, and it was said that Hernandez, occupy- 
ing with his band the woods about Los Hatos, was re- 
ceiving the fugitives. That a good many people he 
knew were contemplating such a flight had been well 
known to the chief engineer. 


352 


NOSTROMO 


Father Corbelan’s efforts in the cause of that most 
pious robber had not been altogether fruitless. The 
political chief of Sulaco had yielded at the last moment 
to the urgent entreaties of the priest, had signed a 
provisional nomination appointing Hernandez a general, 
and calling upon him officially in this new capacity to 
preserve order in the town. The fact is that the 
political chief, seeing the situation desperate, did not 
care what he signed. It was the last official document 
he signed before he left the palace of the Intendencia 
for the refuge of the O.S.N. Company’s office. But 
even had he meant his act to be effective it was already 
too late. The riot which he feared and expected broke 
out in less than an hour after Father Corbelan had left 
him. Indeed, Father Corbelan, who had appointed a 
meeting with Nostromo in the Dominican Convent, 
where he had his residence in one of the cells, never 
managed to reach the place. From the Intendencia he 
had gone straight on to the Avellanos’s house to tell 
his brother-in-law, and though he stayed there no 
more than half an hour he had found himself cut off 
from his ascetic abode. Nostromo, after waiting there 
for some time, watching uneasily the increasing uproar 
in the street, had made his way to the offices of the 
Porvenir, and stayed there till daylight, as Decoud had 
mentioned in the letter to his sister. Thus the Capa- 
taz, instead of riding towards the Los Hatos woods as 
bearer of Hernandez’s nomination, had remained in 
town to save the life of the President Dictator, to assist 
in repressing the outbreak of the mob, and at last to sail 
out with the silver of the mine. 

But Father Corbelan, escaping to Hernandez, had the 
document in his pocket, a piece of official writing turn- 
ing a bandit into a general in a memorable last official 
act of the Ribierist party, whose watchwords were 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 353 

; honesty, peace, and progress. Probably neither the 
priest nor the bandit saw the irony of it. Father 
I Corbelan must have found messengers to send into the 
town, for early on the second day of the disturbances 
I there were rumours of Hernandez being on the road to 
I Los Hatos ready to receive those who would put them- 
selves under his protection . A strange-looking horseman, 
elderly and audacious, had appeared in the town, riding 
slowly while his eyes examined the fronts of the houses, 

; as though he had never seen such high buildings before! 

Before the cathedral he had dismounted, and, kneeling 
[ in the middle of the Plaza, his bridle over his arm and 
I his hat lying in front of him on the ground, had bowed 
f his head, crossing himself and beating his breast for 
j some little time. Remounting his horse, with a fearless 
I but not unfriendly look round the little gathering 
I formed about his public devotions, he had asked for the 
Casa Avellanos. A score of hands were extended in 
answer, with fingers pointing up the Calle de la Con- 
stitucion. 

The horseman had gone on with only a glance of 
casual curiosity upwards to the windows of the Amarilla 
Club at the corner. His stentorian voice shouted 
periodically in the empty street, “Which is the Casa 
Avellanos.?” till an answer came from the scared porter, 
and he disappeared under the gate. The letter he was 
bringing, written by Father Corbelan with a pencil by 
the camp-fire of Hernandez, was addressed to Don Jose, 
of whose critical state the priest was not aware. An- 
tonia read it, and, after consulting Charles Gould, sent 
it on for the information of the gentlemen garrisoning 
the Amarilla Club. For herself, her mind was made 
up; she would rejoin her uncle; she would entrust the 
last day — the last hours perhaps, — of her father’s life 
to the keeping of the bandit, whose existence was a 


354 


NOSTROMO 


protest against the irresponsible tyranny of all parties 
alike, against the moral darkness of the laiid. The 
gloom of Los Hatos woods was preferable; a life of hard- 
ships in the train of a robber band less debasing. An- 
tonia embraced with all her soul her uncle’s obstinate 
defiance of misfortune. It was grounded in the belief 
in the man whom she loved. 

In his message the Vicar-General answered upon his 
head for Hernandez’s fidelity. As to his power, he 
pointed out that he had remained unsubdued for so 
many years. In that letter Decoud’s idea of the new 
Occidental State (whose fiourishing and stable con- 
dition is a matter of common knowledge now) was for 
the first time made public and used as an argument. 
Hernandez, ex-bandit and the last general of Ribierist 
creation, was confident of being able to hold the tract of 
country between the woods of Los Hatos and the coast 
range till that devoted patriot, Don Martin Decoud, 
could bring General Barrios back to Sulaco for the re- 
conquest of the town. 

“Heaven itself wills it. Providence is on our side,” 
wrote Father Corbelan; there was no time to reflect upon 
or to controvert his statement; and if the discussion 
started upon the reading of that letter in the Amarilla 
Club was violent, it was also shortlived. In the 
general bewilderment of the collapse some jumped at 
the idea with joyful astonishment as upon the amazing 
discovery of a new hope. Others became fascinated by 
the prospect of immediate personal safety for their 
women and children. The majority caught at it as a 
drowning man catches at a straw. Father Corbelan 
was unexpectedly offering them a refuge from Pedrito 
Montero with his llaneros allied to Senores Fuentes and 
Gamacho with their armed rabble. 

All the latter part of the afternoon an animated 


i 

' THE LIGHTHOUSE 355 

j discussion went on in the big rooms of the Amarilla 
Club. Even those members posted at the windows 
I with rifles and carbines to guard the end of the street 
; in case of an offensive return of the populace shouted 
{ their opinions and arguments over tljeir shoulders. As 
I dusk fell Don Juste Lopez, inviting those Caballeros who 
j were of his way of thinking to follow him, withdrew 
into the corridor, where at a little table in the light of 
i two candles he busied himself in composing an address, 
or rather a solemn declaration to be presented to Pe- 
drito Montero by a deputation of such members of 
Assembly as had elected to remain in town. His idea 
was to propitiate him in order to save the form at least 
of parliamentary institutions. Seated before a blank 
sheet of paper, a goose-quill pen in his hand and surged 
upon from all sides, he turned to the right and to the 
left, repeating with solemn insistence — 

“Caballeros, a moment of silence! A moment of 
silence! We ought to make it clear that we bow in all 
good faith to the accomplished facts.” 

The utterance of that phrase seemed to give him a 
melancholy satisfaction. The hubbub of voices round 
him was growing strained and hoarse. In the sudden 
pauses the excited grimacing of the faces would sink all 
at once into the stillness of profound dejection. 

Meantime, the exodus had begun. Carretas full of 
ladies and children rolled swaying across the Plaza, with 
men walking or riding by their side; mounted parties 
followed on mules and horses; the poorest were setting 
out on foot, men and women carrying bundles, clasping 
babies in their arms, leading old people, dragging along 
the bigger children. When Charles Gould, after leaving 
the doctor and the engineer at the Casa Viola, entered 
the town by the harbour gate, all those that had meant 
to go were gone, and the others had barricaded them- 


356 


NOSTROMO 


selves in their houses. In the whole dark street there 
was only one spot of flickering lights and moving figures, 
where the Senor Administrador recognized his wife’s 
carriage waiting at the door of the Avellanos’s house. 
He rode up, almost unnoticed, and looked on without a 
word while some of his own servants came out of the 
gate carrying Don Jose Avellanos, who, with closed eyes 
and motionless features, appeared perfectly lifeless. 
His wife and Antonia walked on each side of the im- 
provised stretcher, which was put at once into the 
carriage. The two women embraced; while from the 
other side of the landau Father Corbelan’s emissary, 
with his ragged beard all streaked with grey, and high, 
bronzed cheek-bones, stared, sitting upright in the 
saddle. Then Antonia, dry-eyed, got in by the side of 
the stretcher, and, after making the sign of the cross 
rapidly, lowered a thick veil upon her face. The 
servants and the three or four neighbours who had come 
to assist, stood back, uncovering their heads. On the 
box, Ignacio, resigned now to driving all night (and to 
having perhaps his throat cut before daylight) looked 
back surlily over his shoulder. 

“Drive carefully,” cried Mrs. Gould in a tremulous 
voice. 

“Sz, carefully, si nina,^' he mumbled, chewing his 
lips, his round leathery cheeks quivering. And the 
landau rolled slowly out of the light. 

“I will see them as far as the ford,” said Charles 
Gould to his wife. She stood on the edge of the side- 
walk with her hands clasped lightly, and nodded to him 
as he followed after the carriage. And now the win- 
dows of the Amarilla Club were dark. The last spark 
of resistance had died out. Turning his head at the 
corner, Charles Gould saw his wife crossing over to their 
own gate in the lighted patch of the street. One of their 


! THE LIGHTHOUSE 357 

I neighbours, a well-known merchant and landowner of 
■ the province, followed at her elbow, talking with great 
gestures. As she passed in all the lights went out in the 
|; street, which remained dark and empty from end to end. 

! The houses of the vast Plaza were lost in the night, 
f High up, like a star, there was a small gleam in one of 
I the towers of the cathedral 5 and the ecjuestrian statue 
; gleamed pale against the black trees of the Alameda, 
i like a ghost of royalty haunting the scenes of revolution! 
The rare prowlers they met ranged themselves against 
the wall. Beyond the last houses the carriage rolled 
noiselessly on the soft cushion of dust, and with a 
greater obscurity a feeling of freshness seemed to fall 
from the foliage of the trees bordering the country road. 
The emissary from Hernandez’s camp pushed his horse 
close to Charles Gould. 

“Caballero,” he said in an interested voice, “you are 
he whom they call the King of Sulaco, the master of the 
mine.^ Is it not so.^” 

“Yes, I am the master of the mine,” answered 
Charles Gould. 

The man cantered for a time in silence, then said, “I 
have a brother, a sereno in your service in the San 
Tome valley. You have proved yourself a just man. 
There had been no wrong done to any one since you 
called upon the people to work in the mountains. My 
brother says that no official of the Government, no 
oppressor of the Campo, had been seen on your side of 
the stream. Your own officials do not oppress the 
people in the gorge. Doubtless they are afraid of your 
severity. You are a just man and a powerful one,” he 
added. 

He spoke in an abrupt, independent tone, but evi- 
dently he was communicative with a purpose. He told 
Charles Gould that he had been a ranchero in one of the 


358 


NOSTROMO 


lower valleys, far south, a neighbour of Hernandez in 
the old days, and godfather to his eldest boy; one of 
those who joined him in his resistance to the recruiting 
raid which was the beginning of all their misfortunes. 
It was he that, when his compadre had been carried off, 
had buried his wife and children, murdered by the 
soldiers. 

“Si,senor,”he muttered, hoarsely, “I and two or three 
others, the lucky ones left at liberty, buried them all in 
one grave near the ashes of their ranch, under the tree 
that had shaded its roof.” 

It was to him, too, that Hernandez came after he had 
deserted, three years afterwards. He had still his 
uniform on with the sergeant’s stripes on the sleeve, and 
the blood of his colonel upon his hands and breast. 
Three troopers followed him, of those who had started 
in pursuit but had ridden on for liberty. And he told 
Charles Gould how he and a few friends, seeing those 
soldiers, lay in ambush behind some rocks ready to pull 
the trigger on them, when he recognized his compadre 
and jumped up from cover, shouting his name, because 
he knew that Hernandez could not have been coming 
back on an errand of injustice and oppression. Those 
three soldiers, together with the party who lay behind 
the rocks, had formed the nucleus of the famous band; 
and he, the narrator, had been the favourite lieutenant 
of Hernandez for many, many years. He mentioned 
proudly that the oflBcials had put a price upon his head, 
too; but it did not prevent it getting sprinkled with grey 
upon his shoulders. And now he had lived long enough 
to see his compadre made a general. 

He had a burst of muffled laughter. “And now from 
robbers we have become soldiers. But look, Caballero, 
at those who made us soldiers and him a general ! Look 
at these people!” 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


359 


Ignacio shouted. The light of the carriage lamps, 
i running along the nopal hedges that crowned the bank 
on each side, flashed upon the scared faces of people 
standing aside in the road, sunk deep, like an English 
country lane, into the soft soil of the Campo. They 
j cowered; their eyes glistened very big for a second; and 
then the light, running on, fell upon the half-denuded 
roots of a big tree, on another stretch of nopal hedge, 
> caught up another bunch of faces glaring back appre- 
hensively. Three women — of whom one was carrying a 
child — and a couple of men in civilian dress — one armed 
with a sabre and another with a gun — were grouped 
. about a donkey carrying two bundles tied up in blan- 
kets. Further on Ignacio shouted again to pass a 
carreta, a long wooden box on two high wheels, with the 
door at the back swinging open. Some ladies in it 
I must have recognized the white mules, because they 
screamed out, “Is it you. Dona Emilia 
! At the turn of the road the glare of a big fire filled the 
short stretch vaulted over by the branches meeting over- 
head. Near the ford of a shallow stream a roadside 
rancho of woven rushes and a roof of grass had been set 
on fire by accident, and the flames, roaring viciously, lit 
up an open space blocked with horses, mules, and a 
distracted, shouting crowd of people. When Ignacio 
pulled up, several ladies on foot assailed the carriage, 

’ begging Antonia for a seat. To their clamour she 
answered by pointing silently to her father. 

“I must leave you here,’’ said Charles Gould, in the 
i uproar. The flames leaped up sky-high, and in the re- 
I coil from the scorching heat across the road the stream 
of fugitives pressed against the carriage. A middle- 
aged lady dressed in black silk, but with a coarse manta 
over her head and a rough branch for a stick in her hand, 
staggered against the front wheel. Two young girls, 


360 


NOSTROMO 


frightened and silent, were clinging to her arms. Charles 
Gould knew her very well. 

'' Misericordia ! We are getting terribly bruised in 
this crowd!” she exclaimed, smiling up courageously to 
him. “ We have started on foot. All our servants ran 
away yesterday to join the democrats. We are going 
to put ourselves under the protection of Father Corbe- 
lan, of your sainted uncle, Antonia. He has wrought a 
miracle in the heart of a most merciless robber. A 
miracle!” 

She raised her voice gradually up to a scream as she 
was borne along by the pressure of people getting out of 
the way of some carts coming up out of the ford at a 
gallop, with loud yells and cracking of whips. Great 
masses of sparks mingled with black smoke flew over the 
road ; the bamboos of the walls detonated in the fire with 
the sound of an irregular fusillade. And then the 
bright blaze sank suddenly, leaving only a red dusk 
crowded with aimless dark shadows drifting in con- 
trary directions; the noise of voices seemed to die away 
with the flame; and the tumult of heads, arms, quarrell- 
ing, and imprecations passed on fleeing into the dark- 
ness. 

“I must leave you now,” repeated Charles Gould to 
Antonia. She turned her head slowly and uncovered 
her face. The emissary and compadre of Hernandez 
spurred his horse close up. 

“Has not the master of the mine any message to send 
to Hernandez, the master of the Campo.^” 

The truth of the comparison struck Charles Gould 
heavily. ' In his determined purpose he held the mine, 
and the indomitable bandit held the Campo by the 
same precarious tenure. They were equals before the 
lawlessness of the land. It was impossible to disen- 
tangle one’s activity from its debasing contacts. A 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 361 

•i close-meshed net of crime and corruption lay upon the 
I whole country. An immense and wearv discourage- 
|; ment sealed his lips for a time. 

You are a just man,” urged the emissary of Her- 
jl nandez. Look at those people who made my com- 
I padre a general and have turned us all into soldiers. 

Look at those oligarchs fleeing for life,* with only the 
j clothes on their backs. My compadre does not think 
of that, but our followers may be wondering greatly, and 
I would speak for them to you. Listen, senor! For 
many months now the Campo has been our own. We 
need ask no man for anything; but soldiers must have 
their pay to live honestly when the wars are over. It 
. is believed that your soul is so just that a prayer from 
you would cure the sickness of every beast, like the 
orison of the upright judge. Let me have some words 
from your lips that would act like a charm upon the 
I doubts of our partida, where all are men.” 

I “Do you hear what he says.?” Charles Gould said in 
I English to Antonia. 

' “Forgive us our misery!” she exclaimed, hurriedly. 

“It is your character that is the inexhaustible treasure 
■ which may save us all yet; your character, Carlos, not 
j your wealth. I entreat you to give this man your word 
that you will accept any arrangement my uncle may 
I make with their chief. One word. He will want no 
more.” 

On the site of the roadside hut there remained nothing 
but an enormous heap of embers, throwing afar a 
darkening red glow, in which Antonia’s face appeared 
deeply flushed with excitement. Charles Gould, with 
only a short hesitation, pronounced the required pledge. 
He was like a man who had ventured on a precipitous 
path with no room to turn, where the only chance of 
safety is to press forward. At that moment he under- 


362 


NOSTROMO 


stood it thoroughly as he looked down at Don Jose 
stretched out, hardly breathing, by the side of the erect 
Antonia, vanquished in a lifelong struggle with the 
powers of moral dafkness, whose stagnant depths breed 
monstrous crimes and monstrous illusions. In a few 
words the emissary from Hernandez expressed his com- 
plete satisfaction. Stoically Antonia lowered her veil, 
resisting the longing to inquire about Decoud’s escape. 
But Ignacio leered morosely over his shoulder*. 

“Take a good look at the mules, mi amo^^ he grum- 
bled. “You shall never see them again!” 


CHAPTER FOUR 


Charles Gould turned towards the town. Before 
him jagged peaks of the Sierra came out all black in the 
clear dawn. Here and there a muffled lepero whisked 
round the corner of a grass-grown street before the 
ringing hoofs of his horse. Dogs barked behind the 
walls of the gardens; and with the colourless light 
the chill of the snows seemed to fall from the mountains 
upon the disjointed pavements and the shuttered houses 
with broken cornices and the plaster peeling in patches 
between the flat pilasters of the fronts. The daybreak 
struggled with the gloom under the arcades on the Plaza, 
with no signs of country people disposing their goods 
for the day’s market, piles of fruit, bundles of vegetables 
ornamented with flowers, on low benches under enor- 
mous mat umbrellas; with no cheery early morning 
bustle of villagers, women, children, and loaded don- 
keys. Only a few scattered knots of revolutionists 
stood in the vast space, looking all one way from under 
their slouched hats for some sign of news from Rincon. 
The largest of those groups turned about like one man 
as Charles Gould passed, and shouted, '"Viva la liber- 
tad ! ” after him in a menacing tone. 

Charles Gould rode on, and turned into the archway 
of his house. In the patio littered with straw, a practi- 
cante, one of Dr. Monygham’s native assistants, sat on 
the ground with his back against the rim of the fountain, 
fingering a guitar discreetly, while two girls of the lower 
class, standing up before him, shuffled their feet a little 
and waved their arms, humming a popular dance tune. 

S63 


364 


NOSTROMO 


Most of the wounded during the two days of rioting had 
been taken away already by their friends and relations, 
but several figures could be seen sitting up balancing 
their bandaged heads in time to the music. Charles 
Gould dismounted. A sleepy mozo coming out of the 
bakery door took hold of the horse’s bridle; the practi- 
cante endeavoured to conceal his guitar hastily; the 
girls, unabashed, stepped back smiling; and Charles 
Gould, on his way to the staircase, glanced into a dark 
corner of the patio at another group, a mortally 
wounded Cargador with a woman kneeling by his side; 
she mumbled prayers rapidly, trying at the same time 
to force a piece of orange between the stiffening lips 
of the dying man. 

The cruel futility of things stood unveiled in the levity 
and sufferings of that incorrigible people; the cruel 
futility of lives and of deaths thrown away in the vain 
endeavour to attain an enduring solution of the prob- 
lem. Unlike Decoud, Charles Gould could not play 
lightly a part in a tragic farce. It was tragic enough for 
him in all conscience, but he could see no farcical ele- 
ment. He suffered too much under a conviction of 
irremediable folly. He was too severely practical and 
too idealistic to look upon its terrible humours with 
amusement, as Martin Decoud, the imaginative ma- 
terialist, was able to do in the*dry light of his scepticism. 
To him, as to all of us, the compromises with his con- 
science appeared uglier than ever in the light of failure. 
His taciturnity, assumed with a purpose, had prevented 
him from tampering openly with his thoughts; but the 
Gould Concession had insidiously corrupted his judg- 
ment. He might have known, he said to himself, lean- 
ing over the balustrade of the corridor, that Ribierism 
could never come to anything. The mine had cor- 
rupted his judgment by making him sick of bribing and 


5 THE LIGHTHOUSE 365 

I intriguing merely to have his work left alone from day 
t! to day. Like his father, he did not like to be robbed. 
J It exasperated him. He had persuaded himself that, 
apart from higher considerations, the backing up of Don 
I Jose’s hopes of reform was good business. He had gone 
j forth into the senseless fray as his poor uncle, whose 
sword hung on the wall of his study, had gone forth — in 
the defence of the commonest decencies of organized 
society. Only his weapon was the wealth of the mine, 
more far-reaching and subtle than an honest blade of 
steel fitted into a simple brass guard. 

More dangerous to the wielder, too, this weapon of 
wealth, double-edged with the cupidity and misery of 
mankind, steeped in all the voices of self-indulgence as 
in a concoction of poisonous roots, tainting the very 
cause for which it is drawn, always ready to turn awk- 
wardly in the hand. There was nothing for it now but 
to go on using it. But he promised himself to see it 
shattered into small bits before he let it be wrenched 
from his grasp. 

After all, with his English parentage and English 
upbringing, he perceived that he was an adventurer in 
Costaguana, the descendant of adventurers enlisted in a 
foreign legion, of men who had sought fortune in a 
revolutionary war, who had planned revolutions, who 
had believed in revolutions. For all the uprightness of 
his character, he had something of an adventurer’s easy 
morality which takes count of personal risk in the 
ethical appraising of his action. He was prepared, if 
need be, to blow up the whole San Tome mountain sky 
high out of the territory of the Republic. This reso- 
lution expressed the tenacity of his character, the re- 
morse of that subtle conjugal infidelity through which 
his wife was no longer the sole mistress of his thoughts, 
something of his father’s imaginative weakness, and 


366 


NOSTROMO 


something, too, of the spirit of a buccaneer throwing a 
lighted match into the magazine rather than surrender 
his ship. 

Down below in the patio the wounded Cargador had 
breathed his last. The woman cried out once, and her 
cry, unexpected and shrill, made all the wounded sit 
up. The practicante scrambled up to his feet, and, 
guitar in hand, gazed steadily in her direction with 
elevated eyebrows. The two girls — sitting now one on 
each side of their wounded relative, with their knees 
drawn up and long cigars between their lips — nodded 
at each other significantly. 

Charles Gould, looking down over the balustrade, saw 
three men dressed ceremoniously in black frock-coats 
with white shirts, and wearing European round hats, 
enter the patio from the street. One of them, head and 
shoulders taller than the two others, advanced with 
marked gravity, leading the way. This was Don Juste 
Lopez, accompanied by two of his friends, members of 
Assembly, coming to call upon the Administrador of the 
San Tome mine at this early hour. They saw him, too, 
waved their hands to him urgently, walking up the 
stairs as if in procession. 

Don Juste, astonishingly changed by having shaved 
off altogether his damaged beard, had lost with it nine- 
tenths of his outward dignity. Even at that time of 
serious pre-occupation Charles Gould could not help 
noting the revealed ineptitude in the aspect of the man. 
His companions looked crestfallen and sleepy. One 
kept on passing the tip of his tongue over his parched 
lips; the other’s eyes strayed dully over the tiled floor of 
the corridor, while Don Juste, standing a little in ad- 
vance, harangued the Senor Administrador of the San 
Tome mine. It was his firm opinion that forms had to 
be observed. A new governor is always visited by 


: THE LIGHTHOUSE 367 

I deputations from the Cabildo, which is the Municipal 
‘ Council, from the Consulado, the commercial Board, 
and it was proper that the Provincial Assembly should 
send a deputation, too, if only to assert the existence 
of parliamentary institutions. Don Juste proposed that 
i Don Carlos Gould, as the most prominent citizen of the 
province, should join the Assembly’s deputation. His 
position was exceptional, his personality known through 
the length and breadth of the whole Republic. Official 
courtesies must not be neglected, if they are gone through 
with a bleeding heart. The acceptance of accomplished 
facts may save yet the precious vestiges of parliamentary 
< institutions. Don Juste’s eyes glowed dully; he believed 
in parliamentary institutions — and the convinced drone 
* of his voice lost itself in the stillness of the house like the 
I deep buzzing of some ponderous insect. 

Charles Gould had turned round to listen patiently, 

1 leaning his elbow on the balustrade. He shook his 
head a little, refusing, almost touched by the anxious 
gaze of the President of the Provincial Assembly. It 
was not Charles Gould’s policy to make the San Tome 
mine a party to any formal proceedings. 

“My advice, senores, is that you should wait for your 
fate in your houses. There is no necessity for you to 
give yourselves up formally into Montero’s hands. 
Submission to the inevitable, as Don Juste calls it, is all 
very well, but when the inevitable is called Pedrito 
Montero there is no need to exhibit pointedly the whole 
extent of your surrender. The fault of this country is 
the want of measure in political life. Flat acquiescence 
in illegality, followed by sanguinary reaction — that, 
senores, is not the way to a stable and prosperous future.” 

Charles Gould stopped before the sad bewilderment 
of the faces, the wondering, anxious glances of the eyes. 
The feeling of pity for those men, putting all their trust 


368 


NOSTROMO 


into words of some sort, while murder and rapine 
stalked over the land, had betrayed him into what 
seemed empty loquacity. Don Juste murmured — 

“You are abandoning us, Don Carlos. . . . And 

yet, parliamentary institutions ” 

He could not finish from grief. For a moment he put 
his hand over his eyes. Charles Gould, in his fear of 
empty loquacity, made no answer to the charge. He 
returned in silence their ceremonious bows. His 
taciturnity was his refuge. He understood that what 
they sought was to get the influence of the San Tome 
mine on their side. They wanted to go on a conciliating 
errand to the victor under the wing of the Gould Con- 
cession. Other public bodies — the Cabildo, the Con- 
sulado — would be coming, too, presently, seeking the 
support of the most stable, the most effective force 
they had ever known to exist in their province. 

The doctor, arriving with his sharp, jerky walk, found 
that the master had retired into his own room with 
orders not to be disturbed on any account. But Dr. 
Monygham was not anxious to see Charles Gould at 
once. He spent some time in a rapid examination of 
his wounded. He gazed down upon each in turn, 
rubbing his chin between his thumb and forefinger; his 
steady stare met without expression their silently in- 
quisitive look. All these cases were doing well; but 
when he came to the dead Cargador he stopped a little 
longer, surveying not the man who had ceased to suffer, 
but the woman kneeling in silent contemplation of the 
rigid face, with its pinched nostrils and a white gleam in 
the imperfectly closed eyes. She lifted her head slowly, 
and said in a dull voice — 

“It is not long since he had become a Cargador — only 
a few weeks. His worship the Capataz had accepted 
him after many entreaties.” 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


369 


; “I am not responsible for the great Capataz,” mut- 
tered the doctor, moving off. 

Directing his course upstairs towards the door of 
; Charles Gould s room, the doctor at the last moment 
hesitated; then, turning away from the handle with a 
1 shrug of his uneven shoulders, slunk off hastily along the 
I corridor in search of Mrs. Gould’s camerista. 

Leonarda told him that the senora had not risen yet. 
!The senora had given into her charge the girls belonging 
to that Italian posadero. She, Leonarda, had put them 
to bed in her own room. The fair girl had cried herself 
to sleep, but the dark one — the bigger — had not closed 
her eyes yet. She sat up in bed clutching the sheets 
right up under her chin and staring before her like a 
little witch. Leonarda did not approve of the Viola 
children being admitted to the house. She made this 
feeling clear by the indifferent tone in which she in- 
I quired whether their mother was dead yet. As to the 
j senora, she must be asleep. Ever since she had gone 
into her room after seeing the departure of Dona 
j Antonia with her dying father, there had been no sound 
* behind her door. 

The doctor, rousing himself out of profound reflection, 
told her abruptly to call her mistress at once. He 
hobbled off to wait for Mrs. Gould in the sala. He was 
very tired, but too excited to sit down. In this great 
drawing-room, now empty, in which his withered soul 
had been refreshed after many arid years and his out- 
cast spirit had accepted silently the toleration of many 
side-glances, he wandered haphazard amongst the 
chairs and tables till Mrs. Gould, enveloped in a 
morning wrapper, came in rapidly. 

“You know that I never approved of the silver being 
sent away,” the doctor began at once, as a preliminary 
to the narrative of his night’s adventurers in association 


370 


NOSTROMO 


with Captain Mitchell, the engineer-in-chief, and old 
Viola, at Sotillo’s headquarters. To the doctor, with 
his special conception of this political crisis, the removal 
of the silver had seemed an irrational and ill-omened 
measure. It was as if a general were sending the best 
part of his troops away on the eve of battle upon some 
recondite pretext. The whole lot of ingots might have 
been concealed somewhere where they could have been 
got at for the purpose of staving off the dangers which 
were menacing the security of the Gould Concession. 
The Administrador had acted as if the immense and 
powerful prosperity of the mine had been founded on 
methods of probity, on the sense of usefulness. And it 
was nothing of the kind. The method followed had 
been the only one possible. The Gould Concession had 
ransomed its way through all those years. It was a 
nauseous process. He quite understood that Charles 
Gould had got sick of it and had left the old path to 
back up that hopeless attempt at reform. The doctor 
did not believe in the reform of Costaguana. And now 
the mine was back again in its old path, with the dis- 
advantage that henceforth it had to deal not only with 
the greed provoked by its wealth, but with the resent- 
ment awakened by the attempt to free itself from its 
bondage to moral corruption. That was the penalty cf 
failure. What made him uneasy was that Charles 
Gould seemed to him to have weakened at the decisive 
moment when a frank return to the old methods was the 
only chance. Listening to Decoud’s wild scheme had 
been a weakness. 

The doctor flung up his arms, exclaiming, ‘‘Decoud! 
Decoud!” He hobbled about the room with slight, 
angry laughs. Many years ago both his ankles had 
been seriously damaged in the course of a certain 
investigation conducted in the castle of Sta. Marta by a 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


371 


commission composed of military men. Their nomina- 
5 tion had been signified to them unexpectedly at the dead 
i of night, with scowling brow, flashing eyes, and in a 
tempestuous voice, by Guzman Bento. The old tyrant, 
maddened by one of his sudden accesses of suspicion, 

I mingled spluttering appeals to their fidelity with 
imprecations and horrible menaces. The cells and 
■ casements of the castle on the hill had been already 
' filled with prisoners. The commission was charged 
now with the task of discovering the iniquitous con- 
spiracy against the Citizen-Saviour of his country. 

The dread of the raving tyrant translated itself into 
a hasty ferocity of procedure. The Citizen-Saviour was 
[ not accustomed to wait. A conspiracy had to be dis- 
covered. The courtyards of the castle resounded with 
the clanking of leg-irons, sounds of blows, yells of pain ; 
and the commission of high officers laboured feverishly, 

[ concealing their distress and apprehensions from each 
i other, and especially from their secretary. Father Beron, 
an army chaplain, at that time very much in the con- 
fidence of the Citizen-Saviour. That priest was a big 
round-shouldered man, with an unclean-looking, over- 
grown tonsure on the top of his flat head, of a dingy, 
yellow complexion, softly fat, with greasy stains all 
down the front of his lieutenant’s uniform, and a small 
cross embroidered in white cotton on his left breast. He 
had a heavy nose and a pendant lip. Dr. Monygham 
remembered him still. He remembered him against all 
the force of his will striving its utmost to forget. Father 
Beron had been adjoined to the commission by Guzman 
Bento expressly for the purpose that his enlightened zeal 
should assist them in their labours. Dr. Monygham could 
by no manner of means forget the zeal of Father Beron, 
or his face, or the pitiless, monotonous voice in which 
he pronounced the words, “Will you confess now.^” 


372 


NOSTROMO 


The memory did not make him shudder, but it had 
made of him what he was in the eyes of respectable 
people, a man careless of common decencies, something 
between a clever vagabond and a disreputable doctor. 
But not all respectable people would have had the 
necessary delicacy of sentiment to understand with 
what trouble of mind and accuracy of vision Dr. Monyg- 
ham, medical officer of the San Tome mine, remembered 
Father Beron, army chaplain, and once a secretary of 
a military commission. After all these years Dr. 
Monygham, in his rooms at the end of the hospital 
building in the San Tome gorge, remembered Father 
Beron as distinctly as ever. He remembered that priest 
at nigh , sometimes, in his sleep. On such nights the 
doctor waited for daylight with a candle lighted, and 
walking the whole length of his rooms to and fro, 
staring down at his bare feet, his arms hugging his 
sides tightly. He would dream of Father Beron 
sitting at the end of a long black table, behind which, 
in a row, appeared the heads, shoulders, and epaulettes 
of the military members, nibbling the feather of a quill 
pen, and listening with weary and impatient scorn to 
the protestations of some prisoner calling heaven to 
witness of his innocence, till he burst out, “What’s the 
use of wasting time over that miserable nonsense ! Let 
me take him outside for a while.” And Father Beron 
would go outside after the clanking prisoner, led away 
between two soldiers. Such interludes happened on 
many days, many times, with many prisoners. When 
the prisoner returned he was ready to make a full con- 
fession, Father Beron would declare, leaning forward 
with that dull, surfeited look which can be seen in the 
eyes of gluttonous persons after a heavy meal. 

The priest’s inquisitorial instincts suffered but little 
from the want of classical apparatus of the Inquisition. 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


373 


At no time of the world’s history have men been at a 
loss how to inflict mental and bodily anguish upon 
their fellow-creatures. This aptitude came to them in 
the growing complexity of their passions and the early 
refinement of their ingenuity. But it may safely be said 
I that primeval man did not go to the trouble of inventing 
) tortures. He was indolent and pure of* heart. He 
I brained his neighbour ferociously with a stone axe from 
^ necessity and without malice. The stupidest mind 
may invent a rankling phrase or brand the innocent with 
a cruel aspersion. A piece of string and a ramrod; a 
few muskets in combination with a length of hide rope; 
or even a simple mallet of heavy, hard wood ' applied 
with a swing to human fingers or to the jot/its of a 
human body is enough for the infliction of the most 
exquisite torture. The doctor had been a'very stubborn 
prisoner, and, as a natural consequence of that “bad 
disposition” (so Father Beron called it), his subjugation 
had been very crushing and very complete. That is 
why the limp in his walk, the twist of his shoulders, the 
scars on his cheeks were so pronounced. His con- 
fessions, when they came at last, were very complete, 
too. Sometimes on the nights when he walked the 
floor, he wondered, grinding his teeth with shame and 
rage, at the fertility of his imagination when stimulated 
by a sort of pain which makes truth, honour, self- 
respect, and life itself matters of little moment. 

And he could not forget Father Beron with his mo- 
notonous phrase, “Will you confess now.^” reaching him 
in an awful iteration and lucidity of meaning through the 
delirious incoherence of unbearable pain. He could 
not forget. But that was not the worst. Had he met 
Father Beron in the street after all these years Dr. 
Monygham was sure he would have quailed before him. 
This contingency was not to be feared now. Father 


374 


NOSTROMO 


Beron was dead; but the sickening certitude prevented 
Dr. Monygham from looking anybody in the face. 

Dr. Monygham had become, in a manner, the slave of 
a ghost. It was obviously impossible to take his knowl- 
edge of Father Beron home to Europe. When making 
his extorted confessions to the Military Board, Dr. 
Monygham was not seeking to avoid death. He longed 
for it. Sitting half-naked for hours on the wet earth 
of his prison, and so motionless that the spiders, his 
companions, attached their webs to his matted hair, he 
consoled the misery of his soul with acute reasonings 
that he had confessed to crimes enough for a sentence of 
death — that they had gone too far with him to let him 
live to tell the tale. 

But, as if by a refinement of cruelty. Dr. Monygham 
was left for months to decay slowly in the darkness of his 
grave-like prison. It was no doubt hoped that it would 
finish him off without the trouble of an execution; but 
Dr. Monygham had an iron constitution. It was 
Guzman Bento who died, not by the knife thrust of a 
conspirator, but from a stroke of apoplexy, and Dr. 
Monygham was liberated hastily. His fetters were 
struck off by the light of a candle, which, after months of 
gloom, hurt his eyes so much that he had to cover his 
face with his hands. He was raised up. His heart was 
beating violently with the fear of this liberty. When 
he tried to walk the extraordinary lightness of his feet 
made him giddy, and he fell down. Two sticks were 
thrust into his hands, and he was pushed out of the 
passage. It was dusk; candles glimmered already in 
the windows of the officers’ quarters round the court- 
yard; but the twilight sky dazed him by its enormous 
and overwhelming brilliance. A thin poncho hung over 
his naked, bony shoulders; the rags of his trousers came 
down no lower than his knees; an eighteen months’ 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 375 

■ growth of hair fell in dirty grey locks on each side of his 
r sharp cheek-bones. As he dragged himself past the 
guard-room door, one of the soldiers, lolling outside, 
: moved by some obscure impulse, leaped forward with a 
j strange laugh and rammed a broken old straw hat on 
} his head. And Dr. Monygham, after having tottered, 
continued on his way. He advanced one stick, then 
one maimed foot, then the other stick; the other foot 
followed only a very short distance along the ground, 
toilfully, as though it were almost too heavy to be 
moved at all; and yet his legs under the hanging angles 
of the poncho appeared no thicker than the two sticks in 
his hands. A ceaseless trembling agitated his bent 
body, all his wasted limbs, his bony head, the conical, 
ragged crown of the sombrero, whose ample flat rim 
rested on his shoulders. 

In such conditions of manner and attire did Dr. 
Monygham go forth to take possession -of his liberty. 
And these conditions seemed to bind him indissolubly 
to the land of Costaguana like an awful procedure of 
nglturalization, involving him deep in the national life, 
far deeper than any amount Qf success and honour could 
have done. They did away with his Europeanism; for 
Dr. Monygham had made himself an ideal conception of 
his disgrace. It was a conception eminently fit and 
proper for an oflScer and a gentleman. Dr. Monygham, 
before he went out to Costaguana, had been surgeon in 
one of Her Majesty’s regiments of foot. It was a con- 
ception which took no account of physiological facts or 
reasonable arguments; but it was not stupid for all that. 
It was simple. A rule of conduct resting mainly on 
severe rejections is necessarily simple. Dr. Monyg- 
ham’s view of what it behoved him to do was severe; it 
was an ideal view, in so much that it was the imagina- 
tive exaggeration of a correct feeling. It was also, in its 


376 NOSTROMO 

force, influence, and persistency, the view of an emi« 
nently loyal nature. 

There was a great fund of loyalty in Dr. Monygham’s 
nature. He had settled it all on Mrs. Gould’s head. He 
believed her worthy of every devotion. At the bottom 
of his heart he felt an angry uneasiness before the pros- 
perity of the San Tome mine, because its growth was 
robbing her of all peace of mind. Costaguana was no 
place for a woman of that kind. What could Charles 
Gould have been thinking of when he brought her out 
there ! It was outrageous ! And the doctor had 
watched the course of events with a grim and distant 
reserve which, he imagined, his lamentable history im- 
posed upon him. 

Loyalty to Mrs. Gould could not, however, leave out 
of account the safety of her husband. The doctor had 
contrived to be in town at the critical time because he 
mistrusted Charles Gould. He considered him hope- 
lessly infected with the madness of revolutions. That 
is why he hobbled in distress in the drawing-room of the 
Casa Gould on that morning, exclaiming, “Decoud, 
Decoud!” in a tone of mournful irritation. 

Mrs. Gould, her colour heightened, and with glisten- 
ing eyes, looked straight before her at the sudden 
enormity of that disaster. The finger-tips on one hand 
rested lightly on a low little table by her side, and the 
arm trembled right up to the shoulder. The sun, 
which looks late upon Sulaco, issuing in all the fulness of 
its power high up on the sky from behind the dazzling 
snow-edge of HiguerotsC, had precipitated the delieate, 
smooth, pearly greyness of light, in which the town lies 
steeped during the early hours, into sharp-cut masses of 
black shade and spaces of hot, blinding glare. Three 
long rectangles of sunshine fell through the windows of 
the sala; while just across the street the front of the 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


377 


Avellanos’s house appeared very sombre in its own 
[shadow seen through the flood of light. 

A voice said at the door, “What of Decoud.^^” 

It was Charles Gould. They had not heard him 
coming along the corridor. His glance just glided over 
‘ his wife and struck full at the doctor. 

“You have brought some news, doctor?” 

Dr. Monygham blurted it all at once, in the rough. 
For some time after he had done, the Administrador of 
i the San Tome mine remained looking at him without a 
j word. Mrs. Gould sank into a low chair with her hands 
( lying on her lap. A silence reigned between those three 
I motionless persons. Then Charles Gould spoke — 

“You must want some breakfast.” 

He stood aside to let his wife pass first. She caught 
up her husband’s hand and pressed it as she went out, 
raising the handkerchief to her eyes. The sight of her 
husband had brought Antonia’s position to her mind, 
and she could not contain her tears at the thought of the 
poor girl. When she rejoined the two men in the dining- 
room after having bathed her face, Charles Gould was 
saying to the doctor across the table — 

“No, there does not seem any room for doubt.” 

And the doctor assented. 

“No, I don’t see myself how we could question that 
wretched Hirsch’s tale. It’s only too true, I fear.” 

She sat down desolately at the head of the table and 
looked from one to the other. The two men, without 
absolutely turning their heads away, tried to avoid her 
glance. The doctor even made a show of being hungry; 
he seized his knife and fork, and began to eat with 
emphasis, as if on the stage. Charles Gould made no 
pretence of the sort; with his elbows raised squarely, he 
twisted both ends of his flaming moustaches they were 
so long that his hands were quite away from his face. 


378 


NOSTROMO 


“I am not surprised,” he muttered, abandoning 
his moustaches and throwing one arm over the back 
of his chair. His face was calm with that immobility 
of expression which betrays the intensity of a mental 
struggle. He felt that this accident had brought to a 
point all the consequences involved in his line of con- 
duct, with its conscious and subconscious intentions. 
There must be an end now of this silent reserve, of that 
air of impenetrability behind which he had been safe- 
guarding his dignity. It was the least ignoble form of 
dissembling forced upon him by that parody of civilized 
institutions which offended his intelligence, his up- 
rightness, and his sense of right. He was like his father. 
He had no ironic eye. He was not amused at the 
absurdities that prevail in this world. They hurt him 
in his innate gravity. He felt that the miserable death of 
that poor Decoud took from him his inaccessible position 
of a force in the background. It committed him openly 
unless he wished to throw up the game — and that was 
impossible. The material interests required from him 
the sacrifice of his aloofness — perhaps his own safety 
too. And he reflected that Decoud ’s separationist 
plan had not gone to the bottom with the lost silver. 

The only thing that was not changed was his position 
towards Mr. Holroyd. The head of silver and steel 
interests had entered into Costaguana affairs with a sort 
of passion. Costaguana had become" necessary to his 
existence; in the San Tome mine he had found the 
imaginative satisfaction which other minds would get 
from drama, from art, or from a risky and fascinating 
sport. It was a special form of the great man’s ex- 
travagance, sanctioned by a moral intention, big 
enough to flatter his vanity. Even in this aberration of 
his genius he served the progress of the world. Charles 
Gould felt sure of being understood with precision and 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


379 


judged with the indulgence of their common passion. 
Nothing now could surprise or startle this great man. 
And Charles Gould imagined himself writing a letter to 
San Francisco in some such words: “. . . . The 

men at the head of the movement are dead or have 
I fled; the civil organization of the province is at an end 
I for the present; the Blanco party in Sulaco has col- 
lapsed inexcusably, but in the characteristic manner of 
this country. But Barrios, untouched in Cayta, 
remains still available. I am forced to take up openly 
the plan of a provincial revolution as the only way of 
1 placing the enormous material interests involved in the 
! prosperity and peace of Sulaco in a position of perma- 
nent safety. . . That was clear. He saw these 

words as if written in letters of fire upon the wall at 
which he was gazing abstractedly. 

Mrs Gould watched his abstraction with dread. It 
was a domestic and frightful phenomenon that dark- 
ened and chilled the house for her like a thunder- 
cloud passing over the sun. Charles Gould’s fits of 
abstraction depicted the energetic concentration of a 
will haunted by a fixed idea. A man haunted by a 
fixed idea is insane. He is dangerous even if that 
idea is an idea of justice; for may he not bring the 
heaven down pitilessly upon a loved head.^ The eyes 
of Mrs. Gould, watching her husband’s profile, filled 
with tears again. And again she seemed to see the 
despair of the unfortunate Antonia. 

“What would I have done if Charley had been 
drowned while we were engaged.^” she exclaimed, men- 
tally, with horror. Her heart turned to ice, while 
her cheeks flamed up as if scorched by the blaze of a 
funeral pyre consuming all her earthly affections. The 
tears burst out of her eyes. 

“Antonia will kill herself!” she cried out. 


380 


NOSTROMO 


This cry fell into the silence of the room with 
strangely little effect. Only the doctor, crumbling 
up a piece of bread, with his head inclined on one side, 
raised his face, and the few long hairs sticking out of 
his shaggy eyebrows stirred in a slight frown. Dr, 
Monygham thought quite sincerely that Decoud was a 
singularly unworthy object for any woman’s affection. 
Then he lowered his head again ^ with a curl of his lip, 
and his heart full of tender admiration for Mrs. Gould. 

“She thinks of that girl,” he said to himself; “she 
thinks of the Viola children; she thinks of me; of the 
wounded ; of the miners ; she always thinks of everybody 
who is poor and miserable! But what will she do if 
Charles gets the worst of it in this infernal scrimmage 
those confounded Avellanos have drawn him into? No 
one seems to be thinking of her.” 

Charles Gould, staring at the wall, pursued his re- 
flections subtly. 

“I shall write to Holroyd that the San Tome mine is 
big enough to take in hand the making of a new State. 
It’ll please him. It’ll reconcile him to the risk.” 

But was Barrios really available? Perhaps. But he 
was inaccessible. To send off a boat to Cayta was no 
longer possible, since Sotillo was master of the harbour, 
and had a steamer at his disposal. And now, with all 
the democrats in the province up, and every Campo 
township in a state of disturbance, where could he find 
a man who would make his way successfully overland to 
Cayta with a message, a ten days’ ride at least; a man 
of courage and resolution, who would avoid arrest or 
murder, and if arrested would faithfully eat the paper? 
The Capataz de Cargadores would have been just such 
a man. But the Capataz of the Cargadores was no 
more. 

And Charles Gould, withdrawing his eyes from the 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 381 

wall, said gently, ‘‘That Hirsch! What an extraor- 
dinary thing! Saved himself by clinging to the an- 
chor, did he? I had no idea that he was still in Sulaco. 
I thought he had gone back overland to Esmeralda 
more than a week ago. He came here once to talk 
to me about his hide business and some other things. 
I made it clear to him that nothing could be done.” 

‘‘He was afraid to start back on account of Hernandez 
being about,” remarked the doctor. 

“And but for him we might not have known anything 
of what has happened,” marvelled Charles Gould. 

Mrs. Gould cried out — 

“Antonia must not know! She must not be told. 
Not now.” 

“Nobody’s likely to carry the news,” remarked the 
doctor. “It’s no one’s interest. Moreover, the people 
here are afraid of Hernandez as if he were the devil.” 
He turned to Charles Gould. “It’s even awkward, 
because if you wanted to communicate with the ref- 
ugees you could find no messengej. When Hernandez 
was ranging hundreds of miles away from here the 
Sulaco populace used to shudder at the tales of him 
roasting his prisoners alive.” 

“Yes,” murmured Charles Gould; “Captain Mit- 
chell’s Capataz was the only man in the town who had 
seen Hernandez eye to eye. Father Corbelan em- 
ployed him. He opened the communications first. It 
is a pity that ” 

His voice was covered by the booming of the great 
bell of the cathedral. Three single strokes, one after 
another, burst out explosively, dying away in deep and 
mellow vibrations. And then all the bells in the tower 
of every church, convent, or chapel in town, even those 
that had remained shut up for years, pealed out to- 
gether with a crash. In this furious flood of metallic 


382 


NOSTROMO 


uproar there was a power of suggesting images of strife 
and violence which blanched Mrs. Gould’s cheek. 
Basilio, who had been waiting at table, shrinking within 
himself, clung to the sideboard with chattering teeth. 
It was impossible to hear yourself speak. 

“Shut these windows!” Charles Gould yelled at him, 
angrily. All the other servants, terrified at what they 
took for the signal of a general massacre, had rushed up- 
stairs, tumbling over each other, men and women, the 
obscure and generally invisible population of the ground 
floor on the four sides of the patio. The women, scream- 
ing “Misericordia!” ran right into the room, and, fall- 
ing on their knees against the walls, began to cross them- 
selves convulsively. The staring heads of men blocked 
the doorway in an instant — mozos from the stable, 
gardeners, nondescript helpers living on the crumbs of 
the munificent house — and Charles Gould beheld all 
the extent of his domestic establishment, even to the 
gatekeeper. This was a half -paralyzed old man, whose 
long white locks fell down to his shoulders : an heirloom 
taken up by Charle# Gould’s familial piety. He could 
remember Henry Gould, an Englishman and a Costa- 
guanero of the second generation, chief of the Sulaco 
province; he had been his personal mozo years and 
years ago in peace and war; had been allowed to attend 
his master in prison; had, on the fatal morning, fol- 
lowed the firing squad; and, peeping from behind one 
of the cypresses growing along the wall of the Franciscan 
Convent, had seen, with his eyes starting out of his 
head, Don Enrique throw up his hands and fall with 
his face in the dust. Charles Gould noted particularly 
the big patriarchal head of that witness in the rear of the 
other servants. But he was surprised to see a shrivelled 
old hag or two, of whose existence within the walls of his 
house he had not been aware. They must have been the 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


383 


mothers, or even the grandmothers of some of his people. 
There were a few children, too, more or less naked, cry- 
ing and clinging to the legs of their elders. He had never 
before noticed any sign of a child in his patio. Even 
Leonarda, the camerista, came in a fright, pushing 
through, with her spoiled, pouting face of a favourite 
maid, leading the Viola girls by the hand. The crockery 
rattled on table and sideboard, and the whole house 
seemed to sway in the deafening wave of sound. 


CHAPTER FIVE 


During the night the expectant populace had taken 
possession of all the belfries in the town in order to wel- 
come Pedrito Montero, who was making his entry after 
having slept the night in Rincon. And first came strag- 
gling in through the land gate the armed mob of all 
colours, complexions, types, and states of raggedness, 
calling themselves the Sulaco National Guard, and 
commanded by Senor Gamacho. Through the middle 
of the street streamed, like a torrent of rubbish, a mass 
of straw hats, ponchos, gun-barrels, with an enormous 
green and yellow flag flapping in their midst, in a 
cloud of dust, to the furious beating of drums. The 
spectators recoiled against the walls of the houses 
shouting their Vivas ! Behind the rabble could be seen 
the lances of the cavalry, the “army” of Pedro Montero. 
He advanced between Sen ores Fuentes and Gamacho 
at the head of his llaneros, who had accomplished the 
feat of crossing the Paramos of the Higuerota in a 
snow-storm. They rode four abreast, mounted on 
confiscated Campo horses, clad in the heterogeneous 
stock of roadside stores they had looted hurriedly in 
their rapid ride through the northern part of the prov- 
ince; for Pedro Montero had been in a great hurry 
to occupy Sulaco. The handkerchiefs knotted loosely 
around their bare throats were glaringly new, and all 
the right sleeves of their cotton shirts had been cut 
off close to the shoulder for greater freedom in throwing 
the lazo. Emaciated greybeards rode by the side of 
lean dark youths, marked by all the hardships of cam- 
384 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


885 


paigning, with strips of raw beef twined round the 
crowns of their hats, and huge iron spurs fastened to 
their naked heels. Those that in the passes of the 
mountain had lost their lances had provided themselves 
with the goads used by the Campo cattlemen: slender 
shafts of palm fully ten feet long, with a lot of loose rings 
jingling under the ironshod point. They were armed 
with knives and revolvers. A haggard fearlessness char- 
acterized the expression of all these sun-blacked coun- 
tenances; they glared down haughtily with their 
scorched eyes at the crowd, or, blinking upwards in- 
solently, pointed out to each other some particular 
head amongst the women at the windows. When they 
had ridden into the Plaza and caught sight of the eques- 
trian statue of the King dazzlingly white in the sun- 
shine, towering enormous and motionless above the 
surges of the crowd, with its eternal gesture of saluting, 
a murmur of surprise ran through their ranks. “What 
is that saint in the big hat.^” they asked each other. 

They were a good sample of the cavalry of the plains 
with which Pedro Montero had helped so much the vic- 
torious career of his brother the general. The influence 
which that man, brought up in coast towns, acquired in 
a short time over the plainsmen of the Republic can be 
ascribed only to a genius for treachery of so effective 
a kind that it must have appeared to those violent men 
but little removed from a state of utter savagery, as the 
perfection of sagacity and virtue. The popular lore 
of all nations testifies that duplicity and cunning, to- 
gether with bodily strength, were looked upon, even 
more than courage, as heroic virtues by primitive man- 
kind. To overcome your adversary was the great 
affair of life. Courage was taken for granted. But 
the use of intelligence awakened wonder and respect. 
Stratagems, providing they did not fail, were honourable; 


386 


NOSTROMO 


the easy massacre of an unsuspecting enemy evoked 
no feelings but those of gladness, pride, and admiration. 
Not perhaps that primitive men were more faithless 
than their descendants of to-day, but that they went 
straighter to their aim, and were more artless in their 
recognition of success as the only standard of morality. 

We have changed since. The use of intelligence 
awakens little wonder and less respect. But the ignorant 
and barbarous plainsmen engaging in civil strife followed 
willingly a leader who often managed to deliver their 
enemies bound, as it were, into their hands. Pedro Mon- 
tero had a talent for lulling his adversaries into a sense 
of security. And as men learn wisdom with extreme 
slowness, and are always ready to believe promises that 
flatter their secret hopes, Pedro Montero was successful 
time after time. Whether only a servant or some inferior 
official in the Costaguana Legation in Paris, he had 
rushed back to his country directly he heard that his 
brother had emerged from the obscurity of his frontier 
commandancia. He had managed to deceive by his 
gift of plausibility the chiefs of the Ribierist movement 
in the capital, and even the acute agent of the San 
Tome mine had failed to understand him thoroughly. 
At once he had obtained an enormous influence over 
his brother. They were very much alike in appearance, 
both bald, with bunches of crisp hair above their ears, 
arguing the presence of some negro blood. Only Pedro 
was smaller than the general, more delicate altogether, 
with an ape-like faculty for imitating all the outward 
signs of refinement and distinction, and with a parrot- 
like talent for languages. Both brothers had received 
some elementary instruction by the munificence of a 
great European traveller, to whom their father had been 
a body-servant during his journeys in the interior of 
the country. In General Montero’s case it enabled 


387 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 

him to rise from the ranks. Pedrito, the younger, in- 
corrigibly lazy and slovenly, had drifted aimlessly from 
one coast town to another, hanging about counting- 
houses, attaching himself to strangers as a sort of valet- 
de-place, picking up an easy and disreputable living. 
His ability to read did nothing for him but fill his head 
with absurd visions. His actions were usually deter- 
mined by motives so improbable in themselves as to 
escape the penetration of a rational person. 

Thus at first sight the agent of the Gould Concession 
in Sta. Marta had credited him with the possession of 
sane views, and even with a restraining power over the 
general’s everlastingly discontented vanity. It could 
never have entered his head that Pedrito Montero, 
lackey or inferior scribe, lodged in the garrets of the 
various Parisian hotels where the Costaguana Legation 
used to shelter its diplomatic dignity, had been devour- 
ing the lighter sort of historical works in the French 
language, such, for instance as the books of Imbert 
de Saint Amand upon the Second Empire. But Pedrito 
had been struck by the splendour of a brilliant court, 
and had conceived the idea of an existence for himself 
where, like the Due de Morny, he would associate the 
command of every pleasure with the conduct of political 
affairs and enjoy power supremely in every way. No- 
body could have guessed that. And yet this was one 
of the immediate causes of the Monterist Revolution. 
This will appear less incredible by the reflection that 
the fundamental causes were the same as ever, rooted 
in the political immaturity of the people, in the indo- 
lence of the upper classes and the mental darkness of 
the lower. 

Pedrito Montero saw in the elevation of his brother 
the road wide open to his wildest imaginings. This was 
what made the Monterist pronunciamiento so unpre- 


388 


NOSTROMO 


veritable. The general himself probably could have been 
bought off, pacified with flatteries, despatched oh a 
diplomatic mission to Europe. It was his brother who 
had egged him on from first to last. He wanted to be- 
come the most brilliant statesman of South America. 
He did not desire supreme power. He would have been 
afraid of its labour and risk, 'in fact. Before all, Pedrito 
Montero, taught by his European experience, meant 
to acquire a serious fortune for himself. With this 
object in view he obtained from his brother, on the 
very morrow of the successful battle, the permission 
to push on over the mountains and take possession 
of Sulaco. Sulaco was the land of future prosperity, 
the chosen land of material progress, the only province 
in the Republic of interest to European capitalists. 
Pedrito Montero, following the example of the Due de 
Morny, meant to have his share of this prosperity. 
This is what he meant literally. Now his brother was 
master of the country, whether as president, dictator, 
or even as Emperor — why not as an Emperor.^ — he 
meant to demand a share in every enterprise — in rail- 
ways, in mines, in sugar estates, in cotton mills, in land 
companies, in each and every undertaking — as the price 
of his protection. The desire to be on the spot early 
was the real cause of the celebrated ride over the moun- 
tains with some two hundred llaneros, an enterprise of 
which the dangers had not appeared at first clearly to 
his impatience. Coming from a series of victories, it 
seemed to him that a Montero had only to appear 
to be master of the situation. This illusion had be- 
trayed him into a rashness of which he was becoming 
aware. As he rode at the head of his llaneros he re- 
gretted that there were so few of them. The enthusiasm 
of the populace reassured him. They yelled '^Viva 
Montero ! V iva Pedrito ! ” In order to make them still 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


389 


more enthusiastic, and from the natural pleasure he had 
in dissembling, he dropped the reins on his horse’s neck, 
and with a tremendous effect of familiarity and con- 
fidence slipped his hands under the arms of Sen ores 
Fuentes and Gamacho. In that posture, with a ragged 
town mozo holding his horse by the bridle, he rode 
triumphantly across the Plaza to the door of the In- 
tendencia. Its old gloomy walls seemed to shake in 
the acclamations that rent the air and covered the 
crashing peals of the cathedral bells. 

Pedro Montero, the brother of the general, dis- 
mounted into a shouting and perspiring throng of en- 
thusiasts whom the ragged Nationals were pushing 
back fiercely. Ascending a few steps he surveyed the 
large crowd gaping at him and the bullet-speckled 
walls of the houses opposite lightly veiled by a sunny 
haze of dust. The word “PORVENIR” in immense 
black capitals, alternating with broken windows, stared 
at him across the vast space; and he thought with de- 
light of the hour of vengeance, because he was very sure 
of laying his hands upon Decoud. On his left hand, 
Gamacho, big and hot, wiping his hairy wet face, 
uncovered a set of yellow fangs in a grin of stupid hilar- 
ity. On his right, Senor Fuentes, small and lean, 
looked on with compressed lips. The crowd stared 
literally open-mouthed, lost in eager stillness, as 
though they had expected the great guerrillero, the 
famous Pedrito, to begin scattering at once some sort 
of visible largesse. What he began was a speech. He 
began it with the shouted word “Citizens!” which 
reached even those in the middle of the Plaza. After- 
wards the greater part of the citizens remained fasci- 
nated by the orator’s action alone, his tip-toeing, the 
arms flung above his head with the fists clencjied, a 
hand laid flat upon the heart, the silver gleam of rolling 


390 


NOSTROMO 


eyes, the sweeping, pointing, embracing gestures, a 
hand laid familiarly on Gamacho’s shoulder; a hand 
waved formally towards the little black-coated person 
of Seiior Fuentes, advocate and politician and a true 
friend of the people. The vivas of those nearest to the 
orator bursting out suddenly propagated themselves ir- 
regularly to the confines of the crowd, like fiames run- 
ning over dry grass, and expired in the opening of the 
streets. In the intervals, over the swarming Plaza 
brooded a heavy silence, in which the mouth of the 
orator went on opening and shutting, and detached 
phrases — “The happiness of the people,” “Sons of 
the country,” “The entire world, el mundo entiero ’' — 
reached even the packed steps of the cathedral with 
a feeble clear ring, thin as the buzzing of a mosquito. 
But the orator struck his breast; he seemed to prance 
between his two supporters. It was the supreme effort 
of his peroration. Then the two smaller figures dis- 
appeared from the public gaze and the enormous Ga- 
macho, left alone, advanced, raising his hat high above 
his head. Then he covered himself proudly and yelled 
out, “ Ciudadanos ! ” A dull roar greeted Sen or Ga- 
macho, ex-pedlar of the Campo, Commandante of the 
National Guards. 

Upstairs Pedrito Montero walked about rapidly from 
one wrecked room of the Intendencia to another, snarl- 
ing incessantly — 

“What stupidity! What destruction!” 

Senor Fuentes, following, would relax his taciturn 
disposition to murmur — 

“It is all the work of Gamacho and his Nationals;” 
and then, inclining his head on his left shoulder, 
would press together his lips so firmly that a little 
hollow would appear at each corner. He had his 
nomination for Political Chief of the town in fiis 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 391 

pocket, and was all impatience to enter upon his 
functions. 

In the long audience room, with its tall mirrors all 
starred by stones, the hangings torn down and the 
canopy over the platform at the upper end pulled to 
pieces, the vast, deep muttering of the crowd and the 
howling voice of Gamacho speaking just below reached 
them through the shutters as they stood idly in dimness 
and desolation. 

“The brute!” observed his Excellency Don Pedro 
Montero through clenched teeth. “We must contrive 
as quickly as possible to send him and his Nationals out 
there to fight Hernandez.” 

The new Gefe Politico only jerked his head sideways, 
and took a puff at his cigarette in sign of his agreement 
with his method for ridding the town of Gamacho and 
his inconvenient rabble. 

Pedrito Montero looked with disgust at the absolutely 
bare floor, and at the belt of heavy gilt picture-frames 
running round the room, out of which the remnants of 
torn and slashed canvases fluttered like dingy rags. 

“We are not barbarians,” he said. 

This was what said his Excellency, the popular 
Pedrito, the guerrillero skilled in the art of laying am- 
bushes, charged by his brother at his own demand 
with the organization of Sulaco on democractic prin- 
ciples. The night before, during the consultation 
with his partisans, who had come out to meet him in 
Rincon, he had opened his intentions to Senor Fuentes — 

“We shall organize a popular vote, by yes or no, con- 
fiding the destinies of our beloved country to the wisdom 
and valiance of my heroic brother, the invincible gen- 
eral. A plebiscite. Do you understand.^” 

And Senor Fuentes, puffing out his leathery cheeks, 
had inclined his head slightly to the left, letting a thin, 


392 NOSTROMO 

bluish jet of smoke escape through his pursed lips. He 
had understood. 

His Excellency was exasperated at the devastation. 
Not a single chair, table, sofa, Hagere or console had 
been left in the state rooms of the Intendencia. His 
Excellency, though twitching all over with rage, was 
restrained from bursting into violence by a sense of his 
remoteness and isolation. His heroic brother was very 
far away. Meantime, how was he going to take his 
siesta.? He had expected to find comfort and luxury 
in the Intendencia after a year of hard camp life, ending 
with the hardships and privations of the daring dash 
upon Sulaco — upon the province which was worth 
more in wealth and influence than all the rest of the 
Republic’s territory. He would get even with Ca- 
macho by-and-by. And Senor Camacho’s oration, de- 
lectable to popular ears, went on in the heat and glare 
of the Plaza like the uncouth bowlings of an inferior 
sort of devil cast into a white-hot furnace. Every 
moment he had to wipe his streaming face with his bare 
fore-arm; he had flung off his coat, and had turned up 
the sleeves of his shirt high above the elbows; but he 
kept on his head the large cocked hat with white plumes. 
His ingenuousness cherished this sign of his rank as 
Commandante of the National Cuards. Approving and 
grave murmurs greeted his periods. His opinion was 
that war should be declared at once against France, 
England, Cermany, and the United States, who, by 
introducing railways, mining enterprises, colonization, 
and under such other shallow pretences, aimed at rob- 
bing poor people of their lands, and with the help of 
these Coths and paralytics, the aristocrats would con- 
vert them into toiling and miserable slaves. And 
the leperos, flinging about the corners of their dirt}' 
white mantas, yelled their approbation. Ceneral 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


393 


' Montero, Gamacho howled with conviction, was the 
only man equal to the patriotic task. They assented 
to that, too. 

The morning was wearing on; there were already signs 
of disruption, currents and eddies in the crowd. Some 
were seeking the shade of the walls and under the trees 
of the Alameda. Horsemen spurred through, shouting; 
groups of sombreros set level on heads against the ver- 
tical sun were drifting away into the streets, where the 
open doors of pulperias revealed an enticing gloom re- 
sounding with the gentle tinkling of guitars. The Na- 
tional Guards were thinking of siesta, and the eloquence 
of Gamacho, their chief, was exhausted. Later on, 
when, in the cooler hours of the afternoon, they tried 
I to assemble again for further consideration of public 
I affairs, detachments of Montero’s cavalry camped on 
] the Alameda charged them without parley, at speed, 
I with long lances levelled at their flying backs as far as 
i the ends of the streets. The National Guards of 
I Sulaco were surprised by this proceeding. But they 
were not indignant. No Costaguanero had ever 
learned to question the eccentricities of a military force, 
l! They were part of the natural order of things. This must 
! be, they concluded, some kind of administrative meas- 
ure, no doubt. But the motive of it escaped their 
! unaided intelligence, and their chief and orator, Ga- 
macho, Commandante of the National Guard, was lying 
I drunk and asleep in the bosom of his family. His bare 
feet were upturned in the shadows repulsively, in the 
manner of a corpse. His eloquent mouth had dropped 
open. His youngest daughter, scratching her head with 
one hand, with the other waved a green bough over his 
scorched and peeling face. 


CHAPTER SIX 


The declining sun had shifted the shadows from west 
to east amongst the houses of the town. It had shifted 
them upon the whole extent of the immense Campo, 
with the white walls of its haciendas on the knolls 
dominating the green distances; with its grass-thatched 
ranchos crouching in the folds of ground by the banks 
of streams; with the dark islands of clustered trees on a 
clear sea of grass, and the precipitous range of the 
Cordillera, immense and motionless, emerging from the 
billows of the lower forests like the barren coast of a 
land of giants. The sunset rays striking the snow-slope 
of Higuerota from afar gave it an air of rosy youth, 
while the serrated mass of distant peaks remained black, 
as if calcined in the fiery radiance. The undulating 
surface of the forests seemed powdered with pale gold 
dust; and away there, beyond Rincon, hidden from 
the town by two wooded spurs, the rocks of the San 
Tome gorge, with the flat wall of the mountain itself 
crowned by gigantic ferns, took on warm tones of brown 
and yellow, with red rusty streaks, and the dark green 
clumps of bushes rooted in crevices. From the plain 
the stamp sheds and the houses of the mine appeared 
dark and small, high up, like the nests of birds clustered 
on the ledges of a cliff. The zigzag paths resembled 
faint tracings scratche4 on the wall of a cyclopean 
blockhouse. To the two serenos of the mine on 
patrol duty, strolling, carbine in hand, and watchful 
eyes, in the shade of the trees lining the stream near 
the bridge, Don Pepe, descending the path from 
394 


i THE LIGHTHOUSE 395 

: the upper plateau, appeared no bigger than a large 
t beetle. 

With his air of aimless, insect-like going to and fro 
) upon the face of the rock, Don Pepe’s figure kept on 
descending steadily, and, when near the bottom, sank 
at last behind the roofs of store-houses, forges, and 
] workshops. For a time the pair of serenos strolled 
I back and forth before the bridge, on which they had 
' stopped a horseman holding a large white envelope in 
I his hand. Then Don Pepe, emerging in the village 
j street from amongst the houses, not a stone’s throw from 

ii the frontier bridge, approached, striding in wide dark 
i trousers tucked into boots, a white linen jacket, sabre 
^ at his side, and revolver at his belt. In this disturbed 

time nothing could find the Senor Gobernador with 
! his boots off, as the saying is. 

I At a slight nod from one of the serenos, the man, a 
I messenger from the town, dismounted, and crossed the 
i bridge, leading his horse by the bridle. 

Don Pepe received the letter from his other hand, 
slapped his left side and his hips in succession, feeling 
for his spectacle case. After settling tjie heavy silver- 
mounted affair astride his nose, and adjusting it care- 
fully behind his ears, he opened the envelope, holding 
it up at about a foot in front of his eyes. The paper he 
I pulled out contained some three lines of writing. He 
looked at them for a long time. His grey moustache 
moved slightly up and down, and the wrinkles, radiating 
at the corners of his eyes, ran together. He nodded 
serenely. Bueno,’’ he said. ** There is no answer. 

Then,*in his quiet, kindly way, he engaged in a cau- 
tious conversation with the man, who was willing to talk 
cheerily, as if something lucky had happened to him 
recently. He had seen from a distance Sotillo s in- 
fantry camped along the shore of the harbour on each 


396 


NOSTROMO 


side of the Custom House. They had done no damage 
to the buildings. The foreigners of the railway re- 
mained shut up within the yards. They were no longer 
anxious to shoot poor people. He cursed the foreigners; 
then he reported Montero’s entry and the rumours of 
the town. The poor were going to be made rich now. 
That was very good. More he did not know, and, 
breaking into propitiatory smiles, he intimated that he 
was hungry and thirsty. The old major directed him to 
go to the alcalde of the first village. The man rode off, 
and Don Pepe, striding slowly in the direction of a little 
wooden belfry, looked over a hedge into a little garden, 
and saw Father Roman sitting in a white hammock slung 
between two orange trees in front of the presbytery. 

An enormous tamarind shaded with its dark foliage 
the whole white framehouse. A young Indian girl with 
long hair, big eyes, and small hands and feet, carried out 
a wooden chair, while a thin old woman, crabbed and 
vigilant, watched her all the time from the verandah. 

Don Pepe sat down in the chair and lighted a cigar; 
the priest drew in an immense quantity of snuff out 
of the hollow of his palm. On his reddish-brown 
face, worn, hollowed as if crumbled, the eyes, fresh 
and candid, sparkled like two black diamonds. 

Don Pepe, in a mild and humorous voice, informed 
Father Roman that Pedrito Montero, by the hand of 
Senor Fuentes, had asked him on what terms he would 
surrender the mine in proper working order to a legally 
constituted commission of patriotic citizens, escorted 
by a small military force. The priest cast his eyes up 
to heaven. However, Don Pepe continued, the mozo 
who brought the letter said that Don Carlos Gould 
was alive, and so far unmolested. 

Father Roman expressed in a few words his thankful- 
ness at hearing of the Sefior Administrador’s safety. 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


S97 


The hour of oration had gone by in the silvery ring- 
ing of a bell in the little belfry. The belt of forest 
closing the entrance of the valley stood like a screen 
between the low sun and the street of the village. At 
the other end of the rocky gorge, between the walls of 
[ basalt and granite, a forest-clad mountain, hiding all 
i the range from the San Tome dwellers, rose steeply, 
I! lighted up and leafy to the very top. Three small rosy 
j clouds hung motionless overhead in the great depth 
( of blue. Knots of people sat in the street between the 
f wattled huts. Before the casa of the alcalde, the fore- 
’ men of the night-shift, already assembled to lead their 
men, squatted on the ground in a circle of leather skull- 
caps, and, bowing their bronze backs, were passing 
!i round the gourd of mate. The mozo from the town, 
Ci having fastened his horse to a wooden post before 
the door, was telling them the news of Sulaco as the 
blackened gourd of the decoction passed from hand to 
hand. The grave alcalde himself, in a white waistcloth 
and a flowered chintz gown with sleeves, open wide upon 
his naked stout person with an effect of a gaudy bathing 
robe, stood by, wearing a rough beaver hat at the back 
of his head, and grasping a tall staff with a silver knob 
in his hand. These insignia of his dignity had been 
conferred upon him by the Administration of the mine, 
the fountain of honour, of prosperity, and peace. He 
had been one of the first immigrants into this valley; 
his sons and sons-in-law worked within the mountain 
which seemed with its treasures to pour down the 
thundering ore shoots of the upper mesa, the gifts of 
well-being, security, and justice upon the toilers. He 
listened to the news from the town with curiosity 
and indifference, as if concerning another world than 
his own. And it was true that they appeared to 
him so. In a very few years the sense of belong- 


398 


NOSTROMO 


ing to a powerful organization had been developed 
in these harassed, half- wild Indians. They were proud 
of, and attached to, the mine. It had secured their 
confidence and belief. They invested it with a protect- 
ing and invincible virtue as though it were a fetish 
made by their own hands, for they were ignorant, and 
in other respects did not differ appreciably from the 
rest of mankind which puts infinite trust in its own 
creations. It never entered the alcalde’s head that 
the mine could fail in its protection and force. Politics 
were good enough for the people of the town and the 
Campo. His yellow, round face, with wide nostrils, 
and motionless in expression, resembled a fierce full 
moon. He listened to the excited vapourings of the 
mozo without misgivings, without surprise, without 
any active sentiment whatever. 

Padre Roman sat dejectedly balancing himself, his 
feet just touching the ground, his hands gripping the 
edge of the hammock. With less confidence, but as 
ignorant as his flock, he asked the major what did he 
think Vas going to happen now. 

Don Pepe, bolt upright in the chair, folded his hands 
peacefully on the hilt of his sword, standing perpendicu- 
lar between his thighs, and answered that he did not 
know. The mine could be defended against any force 
likely to be sent to take possession. On the other hand, 
from the arid character of the valley, when the regular 
supplies from the Campo had been cut off, the popula- 
tion of the three villages could be starved into submis- 
sion. Don Pepe exposed these contingencies with 
serenity to Father Roman, who, as an old campaigner, 
was able to understand the reasoning of a military man. 
They talked with simplicity and directness. Father 
Roman was saddened at the idea of his flock being 
scattered or else enslaved. He had no illusions as to 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


399 


their fate, not from penetration, but from long ex- 
perience of political atrocities, which* seemed to him 
fatal and unavoidable in the life of a State. The work- 
ing of the usual public institutions presented itself to 
him most distinctly as a series of calamities overtaking 
private individuals and flowing logically from each other 
through hate, revenge, folly, and rapacity, as though 
they had been part of a divine dispensation. Father 
Roman’s clear-sightedness was served by an uninformed 
intelligence; but his heart, preserving its tenderness 
amongst scenes of carnage, spoliation, and violence, 
abhorred these calamities the more as his association 
with the victims was closer. He entertained towards 
the Indians of the valley feelings of paternal scorn. 
He had been marrying, baptizing, confessing, absolving, 
and burying the workers of the San Tome mine with 
dignity and unction for five years or more; and he be- 
lieved in the saeredness of these ministrations, which 
made them his own in a spiritual sense. They were 
dear to his sacerdotal supremacy. Mrs. Gould s earn- 
est interest in the concerns of these people enhanced 
their importance in the priest’s eyes, because it really 
augmented his own. When talking over with her the 
innumerable Marias and Brigidas of the villages, he felt 
his own humanity expand. Padre Roman was incap- 
able of fanaticism to an almost reprehensible degree. 
The English senora was evidently a heretic; but at the 
same time she seemed to him wonderful and angelic. 
Wlienever that confused state of his feelings occurred 
to him, while strolling, for instance, -his breviary under 
his arm, in the wide shade of the tamarind, he would 
stop short to inhale with a strong snuffling noise a large 
quantity of snuff, and shake his head profoundly. At 
the thought of what might befall the illustrious senora 
presently, he became gradually overcome with dismay. 


400 


NOSTROMO 


He voiced it in an agitated murmur. Even Don Pepe 
lost his serenity for a moment. He leaned forward 
stiffly. 

“Listen, Padre. The very fact that those thieving 
macaques in Sulaco are trying to find out the price of my 
honour proves that Senor Don Carlos and all in the Casa 
Gould are safe. As to my honour, that also is safe, as 
every man, woman, and child knows. But the negro 
Liberals who have snatched the town by surprise do not 
know that. Bueno. Let them sit and wait. While 
they wait they can do no harm.” 

And he regained his composure. He regained it 
easily, because whatever happened his honour of an old 
officer of Paez was safe. He had promised Charles 
Gould that at the approach of an armed force he would 
defend the gorge just long enough to give himself time 
to destroy scientifically the whole plant, buildings, and 
workshops of the mine with heavy charges of dynamite; 
block with ruins the main tunnel, break down the path- 
ways, blow up the dam of the water-power, shatter 
the famous Gould Concession into fragments, flying 
sky high out of a horrified world. The mine had got 
hold of Charles Gould with a grip as deadly as ever 
it had laid upon his father. But this extreme resolution 
had seemed to Don Pepe the most natural thing in the 
world. His measures had been taken with judgment. 
Everything was prepared with a careful completeness. 
And Don Pepe folded his hands pacifically on his 
sword hilt, and nodded at the priest. In his excite- 
ment, Father Roman had flung snuff in handfuls at his 
face, and, all besmeared with tobacco, round-eyed, and 
beside himself, had got out of the hammock to walk 
about, uttering exclamations. 

Don Pepe stroked his grey and pendant moustache, 
whose fine ends hung far below the clean-cut line 


THE LIGHTHOTTSE 401 

of his jaw, and spoke with a conscious pride in his 
reputation. 

“So, Padre, I don’t know what will happen. But I 
know that as lon^ as I am here Don Carlos can speak to 
that macaque, Pedrito Montero, and threaten the 
destruction of the mine with perfect assurance that will 
be taken seriously. For people know me.” 

He began to turn the cigar in his lips a little nervously, 
and went on — 

“But that is talk — good for the politicos. I am a 
military man. I do not know what may happen. But 
I know what ought to be done — the mine should march 
upon the town with guns, axes, knives tied up to sticks 
— por Dios. That is what should be done. Only ” 

His folded hands twitched on the hilt. The cigar 
turned faster in the corner of his lips. 

“And who should lead but I? Unfortunately — ob- 
serve — I have given my word of honour to Don Carlos 
not to let the mine fall into the hands of these thieves. 
In war — you know this. Padre — the fate of battles is 
uncertain, and whom could I leave here to act for me 
in case of defeat? The explosives are ready. But it 
would require a man of high honour, of intelligence, of 
judgment, of courage, to carry out the prepared de- 
struction. Somebody I can trust with my honour as I 
can trust myself. Another old officer of Paez, for in- 
stance. Or-^or — perhaps one of Paez’s old chaplains 
would do.” 

He got up, long, lank, upright, hard, with his martial 
moustache and the bony structure of his face, from which 
the glance of the sunken eyes seemed to transfix the 
I priest, who stood still, an empty wooden snuff-box held 
upside down in his hand, and glared back, speechless, 
at the governor of the mine. 


CHAPTER SEVEN 


At about that time, in the Intendencia of Sulaco, 
Charles Gould was assuring Pedrito Montero, who had 
sent a request for his presence there, that he would never 
let the mine pass out of his hands for the profit of a 
Government who had robbed him of it. The Gould 
Concession could not be resumed. His father had not 
desired it. The son would never surrender it. He 
would never surrender it alive. And once dead, where 
was the power capable of resuscitating such an enter- 
prise in all its vigour and wealth out of the ashes and 
ruin of destruction? There was no such power in the 
country. And where was the skill and capital abroad 
that would condescend to touch such an ill-omened 
corpse? Charles Gould talked in the impassive tone 
which had for many years served to conceal his anger 
and contempt. He suffered. He was disgusted with 
what he had to say. It was too much like heroics. In 
him the strictly practical instinct was in profound dis- 
cord with the almost mystic view he took of his right. 
The Gould Concession was symbolic of abstract justice. 
Let the heavens fall. But since the San Tome mine 
had developed into world- wide fame his threat had 
enough force and effectiveness to reach the rudimentary 
intelligence of Pedro Montero, wrapped up as it was 
in the futilities of historical anecdotes. The Gould 
Concession was a serious asset in the country’s finance, 
and, what was more, in the private budgets of many 
officials as well. It was traditional. It was known. 
It was said. It was credible. Every Minister of 
409 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 403 

Interior drew a salary from the San Tome mine. It 
i was natural. And Pedrito intended to be Minister 
of the Interior and President of the Council in his 
I brother’s Government. The Due de Morny had oc- 
t cupied those high -posts during the Second French 
Empire with conspicuous advantage to himself, 
j A table, a chair, a wooden bedstead had been procured 
I for His Excellency, who, after a short siesta, rendered 
, absolutely necessary by the labours and the pomps of his 
entry into Sulaco, had been getting hold of the adminis- 
trative machine by making appointments, giving orders, 
i and signing, proclamations. Alone with Charles Gould 
in the audience room, His Excellency managed with his 
well-known skill to conceal his annoyance and consterna- 
I tion. He had begun at first to talk loftily of confiscation, 

^ but the want of all proper feeling and mobility in the 
f Senor Administrador’s features ended by affecting 
adversely his power of masterful expression. Charles 
Gould had repeated: “The Government can certainly 
bring about the destruction of the San Tome mine if it 
likes; but without me it can do nothing else.” It was 
an alarming pronouncement, and well calculated to 
hurt the sensibilities of a politician whose mind is bent 
: upon the spoils of victory. And Charles Gould said 
j also that the destruction of tl^e San Tome mine would 
s cause the ruin of other undertakings, the withdrawal 
of European capital, the withholding, most probably, 
of the last instalment of the foreign loan. That stony 
fiend of a man said all these things (which were ac- 
cessible to His Excellency’s intelligence) in a cold- 
blooded manner which made one shudder. 

A long course of reading historical works, light and 
gossipy in tone, carried out in garrets of Parisian hotels, 
sprawling on an untidy bed, to the neglect of his duties, 
menial or otherwise, had affected the manners of Pedro 


404 


NOSTROMO 


Montero. Had he seen around him the splendour of 
the old Intendencia, the magnificent hangings, the gilt 
furniture ranged along the walls; had he stood upon a 
dais on a noble square of red carpet, he would have prob- 
ably been very dangerous from a. sense of success and 
elevation. But in this sacked and devastated residence, 
with the three pieces of common furniture huddled up 
in the middle of the vast apartment, Pedrito’s imagina- 
tion was subdued by a feeling of insecurity and 
impermanence. That feeling and the firm attitude 
of Charles Gould who had not once, so far, pronounced 
the word “Excellency,” diminished him in his own eyes. 
He assumed the tone of an enlightened man of the world, 
and begged Charles Gould to dismiss from his mind 
every cause for alarm. He was now conversing, he 
reminded him, with the brother of the master of the 
country, charged with a reorganizing mission. The 
trusted brother of the master of the country, he re- 
peated. Nothing was further from the thoughts of 
that wise and patriotic hero than ideas of destruction. 
“I entreat you, Don Carlos, not to give way to your 
anti-democratic prejudices,” he cried, in a burst of 
condescending effusion. 

Pedrito Montero surprised one at first sight by the 
vast development of his bald forehead, a shiny yellow 
expanse between the crinkly coal-black tufts of hair 
without any lustre, the engaging form of his mouth, 
and an unexpectedly cultivated voice. But his eyes, 
very glistening as if freshly painted on each side of his 
hooked nose, had a round, hopeless, birdlike stare when 
opened fully. Now, however, he narrowed them agree- 
ably, throwing his square chin up and speaking with 
closed teeth slightly through the nose, with what he 
imagined to be the manner of a grand seigneur. 

In that attitude, he declared suddenly that the highest 


405 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 

expression of democracy was Csesarism: the imperial 
^rule based upon the direct popular vote. Csesarism 
was conservative. It was strong. It recognized the 
legitimate needs of democracy which requires orders, 

I titles, and distinctions. They would be showered 
upon deserving men. Csesarism was peace. It was 
I progressive. It secured the prosperity of a country, 
i Pedrito Montero was carried away. Look at what the 
’ Second Empire had done for France. It was a regime 
which delighted to honour men of Don Carlos’s stamp, 
i The Second Empire fell, but that was because its chief 
was devoid of that military genius which had raised 
General Montero to the pinnacle of fame and glory, 
i Pedrito elevated his hand jerkily to help the idea of 
pinnacle, of fame. “ We shall have many talks yet. 
We shall understand each other thoroughly, Don 
Carlos!” he cried in a tone of fellowship. Republican- 
ism had done its work. Imperial democracy was the 
‘ power of the future. Pedrito, the guerrillero, showing 
his hand, lowered his voice forcibly. A man singled 
out by his fellow-citizens for the honourable nickname 
of El Rey de Sulaco could not but receive a full recogni- 
j tion from an imperial democracy as a great captain 
of industry and a person of weighty counsel, whose 
popular designation would be soon replaced by a more 
solid title. “Eh, Don Carlos.^^ No! What do you 
say.^ Conde de Sulaco — Eh.^ — or marquis . 

He ceased. The air was cool on the Plaza, where a pa- 
trol of cavalry rode round and round without penetrat- 
ing into the streets, which resounded with shouts and 
the strumming of guitars issuing from the open doors 
of pulperias. The orders were not to interfere with the 
enjoyments of the people. And above the roofs, next 
to the perpendicular lines of the cathedral towers the 
snowy curve of Higuerota blocked a large space of 


406 


NOSTROMO 


darkening blue sky before the windows of the Inten- 
dencia. After a time Pedrito Montero, thrusting his 
hand in the bosom of his coat, bowed his head with 
slow dignity. The audience was over. 

Charles Gould on going out passed his hand over his 
forehead as if to disperse the mists of an oppressive 
dream, whose grotesque extravagance leaves behind a 
subtle sense of bodily danger and intellectual decay. 
In the passages and on the staircases of the old palace 
Montero’s troopers lounged about insolently, smoking 
and making way for no one; the clanking of sabres 
and spurs resounded all over the building. Three silent 
groups of civilians in severe black waited in the main 
gallery, formal and helpless, a little huddled up, each 
keeping apart from the others, as if in the exercise of a 
public duty they had been overcome by a desire to shun 
the notice of every eye. These were the deputations 
waiting for their audience. The one from the Provin- 
cial Assembly, more restless and uneasy in its corporate 
expression, was overtopped by the big face of Don Juste 
Lopez, soft and white, with prominent eyelids and 
wreathed in impenetrable solemnity as if in a dense 
cloud. The President of the Provincial Assembly, 
coming bravely to save the last shred of parliamentary 
institutions (on the English model), averted his eyes 
from the Administrador of the San Tome mine as a 
dignified rebuke of his little faith in that only saving 
principle. 

The mournful severity of that reproof did not affect 
Charles Gould, but he was sensible to the glances of the 
others directed upon him without reproach, as if only to 
read their own fate upon his face. All of them had 
talked, shouted, and declaimed in the great sala of the 
Casa Gould. The feeling of compassion for those men, 
struck with a strange impotence in the toils of moral 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


407 


degradation, did not induce him to make a sign. He 
suffered from his fellowship in evil with them too much. 
He crossed the Plaza unmolested. The Amarilla Club 
was full of festive ragamuffins. Their frowsy heads 
protruded from every window, and from within came 
drunken shouts, the thumping of feet, and the twanging 
of harps. Broken bottles strewed the pavement below. 
Charles Gould found the doctor still in his house. 

Dr. Monygham came away from the crack in the 
shutter through which he had been watching the street. 

“Ah! You are back at last!” he said in a tone of 
relief. “I have been telling Mrs. Gould that you were 
perfectly safe, but I was not by any means certain that 
the fellow would have let you go.” 

“Neither was I,” confessed Charles Gould, laying his 
hat on the table. 

“You will have to take action.” 

The silence of Charles Gould seemed to admit that 
this was the only course. This was as far as Charles 
Gould was accustomed to go towards expressing his 
intentions. 

“I hope you did not warn Montero of what you mean 
to do,” the doctor said, anxiously. 

“I tried to make him see that the existence of the 
mine was bound up with my personal safety,” continued 
Charles Gould, looking away from the doctor, and fixing 
his eyes upon the water-colour sketch upon the wall. 

“He believed you.^” the doctor asked, eagerly. 

“God knows!” said Charles Gould. “I owed it to 
my wife to say that much. He is well enough informed. 
He knows that I have Don Pepe there. Fuentes must 
have told him. They know that the old major is per- 
fectly capable of blowing up the San Tome mine with- 
out hesitation or compunction. Had it not been for 
that I don’t think I’d have left the Intendencia a free 


408 


NOSTROMO 


man. He would blow everything up from loyalty 
and from hate — from hate of these Liberals, as they 
call themselves. Liberals! The words one knows so 
well have a nightmarish meaning in this country. 
Liberty, democracy, patriotism, government — all of 
them have a flavour of folly and murder. Haven’t 
they, doctor.^ ... I alone can restrain Don Pepe. 
If they were to — to do away with me, nothing could 
prevent him.” 

“They will try to tamper with him,” the doctor 
suggested, thoughtfully. 

“It is very possible,” Charles Gould said very low, 
as if speaking to himself, and still gazing at the sketch 
of the San Tome gorge upon the wall. “Yes, I expect 
they will try that.” Charles Gould looked for the first 
time at the doctor. “ It would give me time,” he added. 

“Exactly,” said Dr. Monygham, suppressing his ex- 
citement. “ Especially if Don Pepe behaves diplomatic- 
ally. Why shouldn’t he give them some hope of success.^ 
'Eh? Otherwise you wouldn’t gain so much time. 
Couldn’t he be instructed to ” 

Charles Gould, looking at the doctor steadily, shook 
his head, but the doctor continued with a certain 
amount of fire — 

“Yes, to enter into negotiations for the surrender of 
the mine. It is a good notion. You would mature 
your plan. Of course, I don’t ask what it is. I don’t 
want to know. I would refuse to listen to you if you 
tried to tell me. I am not fit for confidences.” 

“What nonsense!” muttered Charles Gould, with 
displeasure. 

He disapproved of the doctor’s sensitiveness about 
that far-off episode of his life. So much memory 
shocked Charles Gould. It was like morbidness. And 
again he shook his head. He refused to tamper with 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 409 

I the open rectitude of Don Pepe’s conduct, both from 
I taste and from policy. Instructions would have to be 
either verbal or in writing. In either case they ran the 
risk of being intercepted. It was by no means certain 
that a messenger could reach the mine; and, besides, 
there was no one to send. It was on the tip of Charles’s 
tongue to say that only the late Capataz de Cargadores 
could have been employed with some chance of success 
and the certitude of discretion. But he did not say 
that. He pointed out to the doctor that it would have 
been bad policy. Directly Don Pepe let it be supposed 
' that he could be bought over, the Administrador’s 
I personal safety and the safety of his friends would be- 
' come endangered. For there would be then no reason 
!, for moderation. The incorruptibility of Don Pepe 
was the essential and restraining fact. The doctor hung 
his head and admitted that in a way it was so. 

He couldn’t deny to himself that the reasoning was 
sound enough. Don Pepe’s usefulness consisted in his 
unstained character. As to his own usefulness, he 
reflected bitterly it was also his own character. He 
declared to Charles Gould that he had the means of 
keeping Sotillo from joining his forces with Montero, 
at least for the present. 

“If you had had all this silver here,” the doctor said, 
“or even if it had been known to be at the mine, you 
could have bribed Sotillo to throw off his recent Mon- 
terism. You could have induced him either to go away 
in his steamer or even to join you.” 

“Certainly not that last,” Charles Gould declared, 
firmly. “What could one do with a man like that, 
afterwards — tell me, doctor.? The silver is gone, and 
I am glad of it. It would have been an immediate 
and strong temptation. The scramble for that visible 
plunder would have precipitated a disastrous ending. 


410 


NOSTROMO 


I would have had to defend it, too. I am glad weVe 
removed it — even if it is lost. It would have been a 
danger and a curse.” 

“Perhaps he is right,” the doctor, an hour later, said 
hurriedly to Mrs. Gould, whom he met in the corridor. 
“The thing is done, and the shadow of the treasure may 
do just as well as the substance. Let me try to serve you 
to the whole extent of my evil reputation. I am off now 
to play my game of betrayal with Sotillo, and keep him 
off the town.” 

She put out both her hands impulsively. “ Dr. Monyg- 
ham, you are running a terrible risk,” she whispered, 
averting from his face her eyes, full of tears, for a short 
glance at the door of her husband’s room. She pressed 
both his hands, and the doctor stood as if rooted to the 
spot, looking down at her, and trying to twist his lips 
into a smile. 

“Oh, I know you will defend my memory,” he uttered 
at last, and ran tottering down the stairs across the 
patio, and out of the house. In the street he kept up 
a great pace with his smart hobbling walk, a case of in- 
struments under his arm. He was known for being loco. 
Nobody interfered with him. From under the seaward 
gate, across the dusty, arid plain, interspersed with low 
bushes, he saw, more than a mile away, the ugly enorm- 
ity of the Custom House, and the two or three other 
buildings which at that time constituted the seaport 
of Sulaco. Far away to the south groves of palm trees 
edged the curve of the harbour shore. The distant 
peaks of the Cordillera had lost their identity of clear- 
cut shapes in the steadily deepening blue of the eastern 
sky. The doctor walked briskly. A darkling shadow 
seemed to fall upon him from the zenith. The sun 
had set. For a time the snows of Higuerota continued 
to glow with the reflected glory of the west. The 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 4H 

doctor, holding a straight course for the Custom House, 
appeared lonely, hopping amongst the dark bushes like 
a tall bird with a broken wing. 

Tints of purple, gold, and crimson were mirrored in 
i the clear water of the harbour. A long tongue of land, 
straight as a wall, with the grass-grown ruins of the 
fort making a sort of rounded green mound, plainly 
visible from the inner shore, closed its circuit; while 
beyond the Placid Gulf repeated those splendours of 
colouring on a greater scale and with a more sombre 
magnificence. The great mass of cloud filling the head 
of the gulf had long red smears amongst its convoluted 
folds of grey and black, as of a floating mantle stained 
with blood. The three Isabels, overshadowed and 
clear cut in a great smoothness confounding the sea 
and sky, appeared suspended, purple-black, in the air. 
The little wavelets seemed to be tossing tiny red sparks 
upon the sandy beaches. The glassy bands of water 
along the horizon gave out a fiery red glow,- as if fire 
and water had been mingled together in the vast bed 
of the ocean. 

At last the conflagration of sea and sky, lying em- 
braced and still in a flaming contact upon the edge of 
the world, went out. The red sparks in the water 
vanished together with the stains of blood in the black 
mantle draping the sombre head of the Placid Gulf; a 
sudden breeze sprang up and died out after rustling 
heavily the growth of bushes on the ruined earthwork 
of the fort. Nostromo woke up from a fourteen hours’ 
sleep, and arose full length from his lair in the long grass. 
He stood knee deep amongst the whispering undulations 
of the green blades with the lost air of a man just born 
into the world. Handsome, rob\ist, and supple, he 
threw back his head, flung his arms open, and stretched 
himself with a slow twist of the waist and a leisurely 


412 


NOSTROMO 


growling yawn of white teeth,' as natural and free from 
evil in the moment of waking as a magnificent and 
unconscious wild beast. Then, in the suddenly steadied 
glance fixed upon nothing from under a thoughtful 
frown, appeared the man. 


CHx\PTER EIGHT 


After landing from his swim Nostromo had scram- 
bled up, all dripping, into the main quadrangle of the 
old fort; and there, amongst ruined bits of walls and 
rotting remnants of roofs and sheds, he had slept 
the day through. He had slept in the shadow of the 
mountains, in the white blaze of noon, in the stillness 
and solitude of that overgrown piece of land between 
the oval of the harbour and the spacious semi-circle 
of the gulf. He lay as if dead. A rey-zamuro, appear- 
ing like a tiny black speck in the blue, stooped, circling 
prudently with a stealthiness of flight startling in a bird 
of that great size. The shadow of his pearly- white 
body, of his black-tipped wings, fell on the grass no 
more silently than he alighted himself on a hillock of 
rubbish within three yards of that man, lying as still 
as a corpse. The bird stretched his bare neck, craned 
his bald head, loathsome in the brilliance of varied 
colouring, with an air of voracious anxiety towards the 
promising stillness of that prostrate body. Then, 
sinking his head deeply into his soft plumage, he settled 
himself to wait. The first thing upon which Nos- 
tromo’s eyes fell on waking was this patient watcher for 
the signs of death and corruption. When the man got 
up the vulture hopped away in great, side-long, flutter- 
ing jumps. He lingered for a while, morose and reluct- 
ant, before he rose, circling noiselessly with a sinister 
droop of beak and claws. 

Long after he had vanished, Nostromo, lifting his 
eves up to the sky, muttered, “I am not dead yet.” 

413 


414 


NOSTROMO 


The Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores had lived in 
splendour and publicity up to the very moment, as it 
were, when he took charge of the lighter containing the 
treasure of silver ingots. 

The last act he had performed in Sulaco wds in com- 
plete harmony with his vanity, and as such perfectly 
genuine. He had given his last dollar to an old woman 
moaning with the grief and fatigue of a dismal search 
under the arch of the ancient gate. Performed in 
obscurity and without witnesses, it had still the char- 
acteristics of splendour and publicity, and was in strict 
keeping with his reputation. But this awakening in 
solitude^ except for the watchful vulture, amongst 
the ruins of the fort, had no such characteristics. His 
first confused feeling was exactly this — that it was not 
in keeping. It was more like the end of things. The 
necessity of living concealed somehow, for God knows 
how long, which assailed him on his return to conscious- 
ness, made everything that had gone before for years 
appear vain and foolish, like a fiattering dream come 
suddenly to an end. 

He climbed the crumbling slope of the rampart, and, 
putting aside the bushes, looked upon the harbour. He 
saw a couple of ships at anchor upon the sheet of water 
reflecting the last gleams of light, and Sotillo’s steamer 
moored to the jetty. And behind the pale long front of 
the Custom House, there appeared the extent of the 
town like a grove of thick timber on the plain with a 
gateway in front, and the cupolas, towers, and miradors 
rising above the trees, all dark, as if surrendered already 
to the night. The thought that it was no longer open 
to him to ride through the streets, recognized by every- 
one, great and little, as he used to do every evening 
on his way to play monte in the posada of the Mexican 
Domingo; or to sit in the place of honour, listening to 


415 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 

songs and looking at dances, made it appear to him as 
a town that had no existence. 

For a long time he gazed on, then let the parted 
j bushes spring back, and, crossing over to the other side 
of the fort, surveyed the vaster emptiness of the great 
s gulf. The Isabels stood out heavily upon the narrowing 
long band of red in the west, which gleamed low between 
I their black shapes, and the Capataz thought of Decoud 
I alone there with the treasure. That man was the only 
j one who cared whether he fell into the hands of the 
Monterists or not, the Capataz reflected bitterly. And 
that merely would be an anxiety for his own sake. As 
to the rest, they neither knew nor cared. What he 
had heard Giorgio Viola say once was very true. 
Kings, ministers, aristocrats, the rich in general, kept 
the people in poverty and subjection; they kept them 
as they kept dogs, to fight and hunt for their service. 

The darkness of the sky had descended to the line of 
the horizon, enveloping the whole gulf, the islets, and 
the lover of Antonia alone with the treasure on the 
Great Isabel. The Capataz, turning his back on these 
things invisible and existing, sat down and took his 
face between his fists. He felt the pinch of poverty 
for the first time in his life. To find himself without 
money after a run of bad luck at monte in the low, 
smoky room of Domingo’s posada, where the fraternity 
of Cargadores gambled, sang, and danced of an evening; 
to remain with empty pockets after a burst of public 
generosity to some peyne d^oro girl or other (for whom 
he did not care), had none of the humiliation of destitu- 
tion. He remained rich in glory and reputation. But 
since it was no longer possible for him to parade the 
streets of the town, and be hailed with respect in the 
usual haunts of his leisure, this sailor felt himself desti- 
tute indeed. 


416 


NOSTROMO 


His mouth was dry. It was dry with heavy sleep and 
extremely anxious thinking, as it had never been dry 
before. It may be said that Nostromo tasted the dust 
and ashes of the fruit of life into which he had bitten 
deeply in his hunger for praise. Without removing 
his head from between his lists, he tried to spit before 
him — “Tfui’’ — and muttered a curse upon the selfish- 
ness of all the rich people. 

Since everything seemed lost in Sulaco (and th^t was 
the feeling of his waking), the idea of leaving the coun- 
try altogether had presented itself to Nostromo. At 
that thought he had seen, like the beginning of another 
dream, a vision of steep and tideless shores, with dark 
pines on the heights and white houses low down near 
a very blue sea. He saw the quays of a big port, 
where the coasting feluccas, with their lateen sails 
outspread like motionless wings, enter gliding silently 
between the end of long moles of squared blocks that 
project angularly towards each other, hugging a cluster 
of shipping to the superb bosom of a hill covered with 
palaces. He remembered these sights not without 
some filial emotion, though he had been habitually and 
severely beaten as a boy on one of these feluccas by a 
short-necked, shaven Genoese, with a deliberate and 
distrustful manner, who (he firmly believed) had cheated 
him out of his orphan’s inheritance. But it is merci- 
fully decreed that the evils of the past should appear 
but faintly in retrospect. Under the sense of loneliness, 
abandonment, and failure, the idea of return to these 
things appeared tolerable. But, what.? Return.? With 
bare feet and head, with one check shirt and a pair of 
cotton calzoneros for all worldly possessions.? 

The renowned Capataz, his elbows on his knees and a 
fist dug into each cheek, laughed with self -derision, as 
he had spat with disgust, straight out before him into 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 417 

the niglit. The confused and intimate impressions of 
universal dissolution which beset a subjective nature at 
any strong check to its ruling passion had a bitterness 
approaching that of death itself. He was simple. He 
was as ready to become the prey of any belief, supersti- 
tion, or desire as a child. 

The facts of his situation he could appreciate like a 
man with a distinct experience of the country. He saw 
them clearly. He was as if sobered after a long bout 
of intoxication. His fidelity had been taken advantage 
of. He had persuaded the body of Cargadores to side 
with the Blancos against the rest of the people; he had 
had interviews with Don Jose; he had been made use 
of by Father Corbelan for negotiating with Hernan- 
dez; it was known that Don Martin Decoud had ad- 
mitted him to a sort of intimacy, so that he had been 
free of the offices of the Porvenir. All these things had 
flattered him in the usual way. What did he care about 
their politics.?^ Nothing at all. And at the end of it all 
— Nostromo here and Nostromo there — where is Nos- 
tromo.? Nostromo can do this and that — work all day 
and ride all night — behold! he found himself a marked 
Ribierist for any sort of vengeance Gamacho, for in- 
stance, would choose to take, now the Montero party, 
had, after all, mastered the town. The Europeans 
had given up; the Caballeros had given up. Don 
Martin had indeed explained it was only temporary — 
that he was going to bring Barrios to the rescue. Where 
was that now — with Don Martin (whose ironic manner 
of talk had always made the Capataz feel vaguely un- 
easy) stranded on the Great Isabel.^ Everybody had 
given up. Even Don Carlos had given up. The 
hurried removal of the treasure out to sea meant nothing 
else than that. The Capataz de Cargadores, on a re- 
vulsion of subjectiveness, exasperated almost to insanity. 


418 NOSTROMO 

beheld all his world without faith and courage. , He had 
been betrayed! _ 

With the boundless shaxlows of the sea behind him, 
out of his silence and immobility, facing the lofty shapes 
of the lower peaks crowded around the white, misty 
sheen of Higuerota, Nostromo laughed aloud again, 
sprang abruptly to his feet, and stood still. He must 
go. But where 

“ There is no mistake. They keep us and encourage 
us as if we were dogs born to fight and hunt for them. 
The vecchio is right,” he said, slowly and scathingly. 
He remembered old Giorgio taking his pipe out of his 
mouth to throw these words over his shoulder at the 
cafe, full of engine-drivers and fitters from the railway 
workshops. This image fixed his wavering purpose. 
He would try to find old Giorgio if he could. God 
knows what might have happened to him! He made 
a few steps, then stopped again and shook his head. 
To the left and right, in front and behind him, the 
scrubby bush rustled mysteriously in the darkness. 

“Teresa was right, too,” he added in a low tone 
touched with awe. He wondered whether she was 
dead in her anger with him or still alive. As if in answer 
to this thought, half of remorse and half of hope, with a 
soft flutter and oblique flight, a big owl, whose appalling 
cry: “Ya-acabo! Ya-acabo! — it is finished; it is fin- 
ished” — announces calamity and death in the popular 
belief, drifted vaguely like a large dark ball across his 
path. In the downfall of all the realities that made his 
force, he was affected by the superstition, and shuddered 
slightly. Signora Teresa must have died, then. It 
could mean nothing else. The cry of the ill-omened 
bird, the first sound he was to hear on his return, was a 
fitting welcome for his betrayed individuality. The 
unseen powers which he had offended by refusing 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


419 


to bring a priest to a dying woman were lifting up 
their voice against him. She was dead. With admir- 
able and human consistency he referred everything to 
himself. She had been a woman of good counsel al- 
ways. And the bereaved old Giorgio remained stunned 
by his loss just as he was likely to require the advice 
of his sagacity. The blow would render the dreamy 
old man quite stupid for a time. 

As to Captain Mitchell, Nostromo, after the manner 
of trusted subordinates, considered him as a person 
fitted by education perhaps to sign papers in an office 
and to give orders, but otherwise of no use whatever, 
and something of a fool. The necessity of winding 
round his little finger, almost daily, the pompous and 
testy self-importance of the old seaman had grown 
irksome with use to Nostromo. At first it had given 
him an inward satisfaction. But the necessity of 
i overcoming small obstacles becomes wearisome to a 
j self-confident personality as much by the certitude 
! of success as by the monotony of effort. He mistrusted 
I his superior’s proneness to fussy action. That old 
I Englishman had no judgment, he said to himself. It 
was useless to suppose that, acquainted with the true 
state of the case, he would keep it to himself. He 
would talk of doing impracticable things. Nostromo 
feared him as one would fear saddling one’s self 
with some persistent worry. He had no discretion. 
He would betray the treasure. And Nostromo had 
made up his mind that the treasure should not be 
betrayed. 

The word had fixed itself tenaciously in his intelli- 
gence. His imagination had seized upon the clear and 
simple notion of betrayal to account for the dazed feel- 
ing of enlightenment as to being done for, of having 
inadvertently gone out of his existence on an issue in 


NOSTROMO 


m 

which his personality had not been taken into account. 
A man betrayed is a man destroyed. Signora Teresa 
(may God have her soul!) had been right. He had 
never been taken into account. Destroyed! Her 
white form sitting up bowed in bed, the falling black 
hair, the wide-browed suffering face raised to him, the 
anger of her denunciations appeared to him now ma- 
jestic with the awfulness of inspiration and of death. 
For it was not for nothing that the evil bird had uttered 
its lamentable shriek over his head. She was dead — 
may God have her soul! 

Sharing in the anti-priestly freethought of the masses, 
his mind used the pious formula from the superficial 
force of habit, but with a deep-seated sincerity. The 
popular mind is incapable of scepticism; and that in- 
capacity delivers their helpless strength to the wiles of 
swindlers and to the pitiless enthusiasms of leaders 
inspired by visions of a high destiny. She was dead. 
But would God consent to receive her soul.f^ She had 
died without confession or absolution, because he had 
not been willing to spare her another moment of his 
time. His scorn of priests as priests remained; but 
after all, it was impossible to know whether what they 
affirmed was not true. Power, punishment, pardon, 
are simple and credible notions. The magnificent 
Capataz de Cargadores, deprived of certain simple 
realities, such as the admiration of women, the adula- 
tion of men, the admired publicity of his life, was ready 
to feel the burden of sacrilegious guilt descend upon his 
shoulders. 

Bareheaded, in a thin shirt and drawers, he felt the 
lingering warmth of the fine sand under the soles of his 
feet. The narrow strand gleamed far ahead in a long 
curve, defining the outline of this wild side of the 
harbour. He flitted along the shore like a pursued 


j THE LIGHTHOUSE m 

I shadow between the sombre palm-groves and the sheet 
i of water lying as still as death on his right hand. He 
I strode with headlong haste in the silence and solitude 
I as though he had forgotten all prudence and caution. 

I But he knew that on this side of the water he ran no 
I risk of discovery. The only inhabitant was a lonely, 

I silent, apathetic Indian in charge of the palmarias, 

I who brought sometimes a load of cocoanuts to the town 
for sale. He lived without a woman in an open shed, 
with a perpetual fire of dry sticks smouldering near 
I an old canoe lying bottom up on the beach. He could 
be easily avoided. 

The barking of the dogs about that man’s ranche was 
the first thing that checked his speed. He had forgotten 
the dogs. He swerved sharply, and plunged into the 
palm-grove, as into a wilderness of columns in an im- 
! mense hall, whose dense obscurity seemed to whisper 
and rustle faintly high above his head. He traversed 
it, entered a ravine, climbed to the top of a steep ridge 
free of trees and bushes. 

From there, open and vague in the starlight, he saw 
the plain between the town and the harbour. In the 
woods above some night-bird made a strange drumming 
noise. Below beyond the palmaria on the beach, the 
Indian’s dogs continued to bark uproariously. He 
wondered what had upset them so much, and, peering 
down from his elevation, was surprised to detect un- 
accountable movements of the ground below, as if ' 
several oblong pieces of the plain had been in motion. 
Those dark, shifting patches, alternately catching and 
eluding the eye, altered their place always away from 
the harbour, with a suggestion of consecutive order 
and purpose. A light dawned upon him. It was a 
column of infantry on a night march towards the higher 
broken* country at the foot of the hills. But he was 


422 NOSTROMO 

too much in the dark about everything for wonder 
and speculation. 

The plain had resumed its shadowy immobility. 
He descended the ridge and found himself in the open 
solitude, between the harbour and the town. Its spa- 
ciousness, extended indefinitely by an effect of ob- 
scurity, rendered more sensible his profound isolation. 
His pace became slower. No one waited for him; no 
one thought of him; no one expected or wished his re- 
turn. “Betrayed! Betrayed!” he muttered to him- 
self. No one cared. He might have been drowned 
by this time. No one would have cared — unless, per- 
haps, the children, he thought to himself. But they 
were with the English signora, and not thinking of him 
at all. 

He wavered in his purpose of making straight for the 
Casa Viola. To what end.^ What could he' expect 
there His life seemed to fail him in all its details, even 
to the scornful reproaches of Teresa. He was aware 
painfully of his reluctance. Was it that remorse which 
she had prophesied with, what he saw now, was her 
last breath? 

Meantime, he had deviated from the straight course, 
inclining by a sort of instinct to the right, towards the 
jetty and the harbour, the scene of his daily labours. 
The great length of the Custom House loomed up all at 
once like the wall of a factory. Not a soul challenged 
his approach, and his curiosity became excited as he 
passed cautiously towards the front by the unexpected 
sight of two lighted windows. 

They had the fascination of a lonely vigil kept by 
some mysterious watcher up there, those two windows 
shining dimly upon the harbour in the whole vast extent 
of the abandoned building. The solitude could almost 
be felt. A strong smell of wood smoke hung about in 


THE LIGHTHOUSE m 

a thin haze, which was faintly perceptible to his raised 
I eyes against the glitter of the stars. As he advanced 
[ in the profound, silence, the shrilling of innumerable 
cicalas in the dry grass seemed positively deafening to 
his strained ears. Slowly, step by step, he found him- 
self in the great hall, sombre and full of acrid smoke. 

A fire built against the staircase had burnt down 
impotently to a low heap of embers. The hard wood 
had failed to catch; only a few steps at the bottom 
! smouldered, with a creeping glow of sparks defining 
! their charred edges. At the top he saw a streak of 
I light from an open door. It fell upon the vast landing, 

I all foggy with a slow drift of smoke. That was the 
I room. He climbed the stairs, then checked himself, 
because he had seen within the shadow of a man cast 
upon one of the walls. It was a shapeless, high- 
shouldered shadow of somebody standing still, with 
lowered head, out of his line of sight. The Capataz, re- 
i membering that he was totally unarmed, stepped aside, 
and, effacing himself upright in a dark corner, waited 
with his eyes fixed on the door. 

The whole enormous ruined barrack of a place, un- 
finished, without ceilings under its lofty roof, was per- 
vaded by the smoke swaying to and fro in the faint cross 
draughts playing in the obscurity of many lofty rooms 
and barnlike passages. Once one of the swinging 
shutters came against the wall with a single sharp crack, 
as if pushed by an impatient hand. A piece of paper 
scurried out from somewhere, rustling along the land- 
ing. The man, whoever he was, did not darken the 
lighted doorway. Twice the Capataz, advancing a 
I couple of steps out of his corner, craned his neck in 
the hope of catching sight of what he could be at, so 
quietly, in there. But every time he saw only the dis- 
torted shadow of broad shoulders and bowed head. 


424 


NOSTROMO 


He was doing apparently nothing, and stirred not 
from the spot, as though he were meditating — or, per- 
haps, reading a paper. And not a sound issued from 
the room. 

Once more the Capataz stepped back. He wondered 
who it was — some Monterist? But he dreaded to show 
himself. To discover his presence on shore, unless 
after many days, would,, he believed, endanger the 
treasure. With his own knowledge possessing his whole 
soul, it seemed impossible that anybody in Sulaco 
should fail to jump at the right surmise. After a 
couple of weeks or so it would be different. Who 
could tell he had not returned overland from some 
port beyond the limits of the Republic.^ The existence 
of the treasure confused his thoughts with a peculiar 
sort of anxiety, as though his life had become bound 
up with it. It rendered him timorous for a moment 
before that enigmatic, lighted door. Devil take the 
fellow! He did not want to see him. There would be 
nothing to learn from his face, known or unknown. 
He was a fool to waste his time there in waiting. 

Less than five minutes after entering the place the 
Capataz began his retreat. He got away down the 
stairs with perfect success, gave one upward look over 
his shoulder at the light on the landing, and ran stealth- 
ily across the hall. But at the very moment he was turn- 
ing out of the great door, with his mind fixed upon es- 
caping the notice of the man upstairs, somebody he had 
not heard coming briskly along the front ran full into 
him. Both muttered a stifled exclamation of surprise, 
and leaped back and stood still, each indistinct to the 
other. Nostromo was silent. The other man spoke 
first, in an amazed and deadened tone. 

“Who are you?” 

Already Nostromo had seemed to recognize Dr. 


’ THE LIGHTHOUSE 425 

I Monygham. He had no doubt now. He hesitated 
' the space of a second. The idea of bolting without a 
! word presented itself to his mind. No use! An in- 
\\ explicable repugnance to pronounce the name by which 
he was known kept him silent a little longer. At last 
he said in a low voice — 

“A Cargador.’^ 

He walked up to the other. Dr. Monygham had 
received a shock. He flung his arms up and cried out 
his wonder aloud, forgetting himself before the marvel 
of this meeting. Nostromo angrily warned him to mod- 
: crate his voice. The Custom House was not so deserted 
as it looked. There was somebody in the lighted room 
! above. 

There is no more evanescent quality in an accom- 
plished fact than its wonderfulness. Solicited inces- 
santly by the considerations affecting its fears and 
desires, the human mind turns naturally away from the 
marvellous side of events. And it was in the most 
natural way possible that the doctor asked this man 
: whom only two minutes before he believed to have 
been drowned in the gulf — 

“You have seen somebody up there Have you?” 

^‘No, I have not seen him.” 

“Then how do you know?” 

“I was running away from his shadow when we 
met.” 

“His shadow?” 

“Yes. His shadow in the lighted room,” said Nos- 
tromo, in a contemptuous tone. Leaning back with 
folded arms at the foot of the immense building, he 
dropped his head, biting his lips slightly, and not look- 
ing at the doctor. “Now,” he thought to himself, “he 
will begin asking me about the treasure.” 

But the doctor’s thoughts were concerned with an 


426 


NOSTROMO 


event not as marvellous as Nostromo’s appearance, 
but in itself much less clear. Why had Sotillo taken 
himself off with his whole command with this sudden- 
ness and secrecy? What did this move portend? 
However, it dawned upon the doctor that the man 
upstairs was one of the oflScers left behind by the dis- 
appointed colonel to communicate with him. 

“I believe he is waiting for me,” he said. 

“It is possible.” 

“I must see. Do not go away yet, Capataz.” 

“Go away where?” muttered Nostromo. 

Already the doctor had left him. He remained 
leaning against the wall, staring at the dark water of 
the harbour; the shrilling of cicalas filled his ears. An 
invincible vagueness coming over his thoughts took 
from them all power to determine his will. 

“Capataz! Capataz!” the doctor’s voice called 
urgently from above. 

The sense of betrayal and ruin floated upon his som- 
bre indifference as upon a sluggish sea of pitch. But he 
stepped out from under the wall, and, looking up, saw 
Dr. Monygham leaning out of a lighted window. 

“Come up and see what Sotillo has done. You need 
not fear the man up here.” 

He answered by a slight, bitter laugh. Fear a man! 
The Capataz of the Sulaco Cargadores fear a man! 
It angered him that anybody should suggest such a 
thing. It angered him to be disarmed and skulking 
and in danger because of the accursed treasure, which 
was of so little account to the people who had tied it 
round his neck. He could not shake off the worry of 
it. To Nostromo the doctor represented all these 
people. . . . And he had never even asked after 

it. Not a word of inquiry about the most desperate 
undertaking of his life. 


427 


I THE LIGHTHOUSE 

Thinking these thoughts, Nostromo passed again 
j through the cavernous hall, where the smoke was con- 
siderably thinned, and went up the stairs, not so warm 
I to his feet now, towards the streak of light at the top. 
! The doctor appeared in it for a moment, agitated and 
, impatient. 

j “Come up! Come up!” 

At the moment of crossing the doorway the Capataz 
experienced a shock of surprise. The man had not 
moved. He saw his shadow in the same place. He 
I started, then stepped in with a feeling of being about to 

( solve a mystery. 

It was very simple. For an infinitesimal fraction of 
j a second, against the light of two flaring and guttering 
candles, through a blue, pungent, thin haze which made 
his eyes smart, he saw the man standing, as he had 
imagined him, with his back to the door, casting an 
enormous and distorted shadow upon the wall. Swifter 
r than a flash of lightning followed the impression of his 
' constrained, toppling attitude — the shoulders project- 
j ing forward, the head sunk low upon the breast. Then 
I he distinguished the arms behind his back, and wrenched 
so terribly that the two clenched fists, lashed together, 
had been forced up higher than the shoulder-blades. 
From there his eyes traced in one instantaneous glance 
the hide rope going upwards from the tied wrists over 
a heavy beam and down to a staple in the wall. He 
did not want to look at the rigid legs, at the feet hanging 
down nervelessly, with their bare toes some six inches 
above the floor, to know that the man had been given 
the estr^pade till he had swooned. His first impulse 
was to dash forward and sever the rope at one blow. 
He felt for his knife. He had no knife — not even a 
knife. He stood quivering, and the doctor, perched 
on the edge of the table, facing thoughtfully the cruel 


428 NOSTROMO 

and lamentable sight, his chin in his hand, uttered, 
without stirring — 

“Tortured — and shot dead through the breast — 
getting cold.” 

This information calmed the Capataz. One of the 
candles flickering in the socket went out. “Who did 
this.^” he asked. 

“Sotillo, I tell you. Whoelse.^ Tortured — of course. 
But why shot?” The doctor looked flxedly at Nos- 
tromo, who shrugged his shoulders slightly. “And 
mark, shot suddenly, on impulse. It is evident. I 
wish I had his secret.” 

Nostromo had advanced, and stooped slightly to 
look. “I seem to have seen that face somewhere,” he 
muttered. “Who is he?” 

The doctor turned his eyes upon him again. “I 
may yet come to envying his fate. What do you 
think of that, Capataz, eh?” 

But Nostromo did not even hear these words. Seizing 
the remaining light, he thrust it under the drooping 
head. The doctor sat oblivious, with a lost gaze. 
Then the heavy iron candlestick, as if struck out of 
Nostromo’s hand, clattered on the floor. 

“Hullo!” exclaimed the doctor, looking up with a 
start. He could hear the Capataz stagger against 
the table and gasp. In the sudden extinction of the 
light within, the dead blackness sealing the window- 
frames became alive with stars to his sight. 

“Of course, of course,” the doctor muttered to himself 
in English. “Enough to make him jump out of his skin.” 

Nostromo’s heart seemed to force itself into his throat. 
His head swam. Hirsch! The man was Hirsch! 
He held on tight to the edge of the table. 

“But he was hiding in the lighter,” he almost shouted. 
His voice fell. “In the lighter, and — and ” 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


429 


“And Sotillo brought him in,” said the doctor. “He 
is no more startling to you than you were to me. What 
I want to know is how he induced some compassionate 
soul to shoot him.” 

“So Sotillo knows ” began Nostromo, in a more 

I equable voice. 

“Everything!” interrupted the doctor. 

The Capataz was heard striking the table with his 
I fist. “Everything? What are you saying, there? 

I Everything? Know everything? It is impossible! 
! Everything?” 

“Of course. What do you mean by impossible? I 
i tell you I have heard this Hirsch questioned last night, 

! here, in this very room. He knew your name, Decoud’s 
name, and all about the loading of the silver. . . . 

The lighter was cut in two. He was grovelling in ab- 
ject terror before Sotillo, but he remembered that much. 

' What do you want more? He knew least about him- 
self. They found him clinging to their anchor. He 
must have caught at it just as the lighter went to the 
bottom.” 

“Went to the bottom?” repeated Nostromo, slowly. 
“Sotillo believes that? Bueno!' ' 

The doctor, a little impatiently, was unable to 
i imagine what else could anybody believe. Yes, Sotillo 
believed that the lighter was sunk, and the Capataz 
de Cargadores, together with Martin Decoud and per- 
haps one or two other political fugitives, had been 
drowned. 

“I told you well, senor doctor,” remarked Nostromo 
at that point, “that Sotillo did not know everything.” 

. “Eh? What do you mean?” 

I “He did not know I was not dead.” 

I “Neither did we.” 

“And you did not care — none of you Caballeros on 


430 


NOSTROMO 


the wharf — once you got off a man of flesh and blood 
like yourselves on a fool’s business that could not end 
well.” 

“You forget, Capataz, I was not on the wharf. And I 
did not think well of the business. So you need not 
taunt me. I tell you what, man, we had but little leis- 
ure to think of the dead. Death stands near behind 
us all. You were gone.” 

“I went, indeed!” broke in Nostromo. “And for the 
sake of what — tell me.^” 

“Ah! that is your own affair,” the doctor said, roughly . 
“Do not ask me.” 

Their flowing murmurs paused in the dark. Perched 
on the edge of the table with slightly averted faces, 
they felt their shoulders touch, and their eyes remained 
directed towards an upright shape nearly lost in the 
obscurity of the inner part of the room, that with pro- 
jecting head and shoulders, in ghastly immobility, 
seemed intent on catching every word. 

''Muy bien!’’ Nostromo muttered at last. “So be it. 
Teresa was right. It is my own affair.” 

“Teresa is dead,” remarked the doctor, absently, 
while his mind followed a new line of thought suggested 
by what might have been called Nostromo’s return to 
life. “She died, the poor woman.” 

“Without a priest?” the Capataz asked, anxiously. 

“What a question! Who could have got a priest for 
her last night?” 

“May God keep her soul!” ejaculated Nostromo, 
with a gloomy and hopeless fervour which had no time 
to surprise Dr. Monygham, before, reverting to their 
previous conversation, he continued in a sinister tone, 
“Si, senor doctor. As you were saying, it is my own 
affair. A very desperate affair.” 

“There are no two men in this part of the world that 


431 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 

could have saved themselves by swimming as you have 
I done,” the doctor said, admiringly, 
j And again there was silence between those two men. 
I They were both reflecting, and the diversity of their 
: natures made their thoughts born from their meeting 
swing afar from each other. The doctor, impelled to 
I risky action by his loyalty to the Goulds, wondered 
I, with thankfulness at the chain of accident which had 
brought that man back where he would be of the great- 
[ est use in the work of saving the San Tome mine. The 
I doctor was loyal to the mine. It presented itself to 
1 his fifty-years’ old eyes in the shape of a little woman in a 
soft dress with a long train, with a head attractively 
overweighted by a great mass of fair hair and the deli- 
cate preciousness of her inner worth, partaking of a 
gem and a flower, revealed in every attitude of her 
person. As the dangers thickened round the San Tome 
! mine this illusion acquired force, permanency, and 
f authority. It claimed him at last! This claim, ex- 
i alted by a spiritual detachment from the usual sanctions 
, of hope and reward, made Dr. Monygham’s thinking, 

I acting, individuality extremely dangerous to himself 
i and to others, all his scruples vanishing in the proud 

I feeling that his devotion was the only thing that stood 
between an admirable woman and a frightful disaster. 
It was a sort of intoxication which made him utterly 
I indifferent to Decoud’s fate, but left his wits perfectly 
clear for the appreciation of Decoud’s political idea. 
It was a good idea — and Barrios was the only instrument 
of its realization. The doctor’s soul, withered and 
shrunk by the shame of a moral disgrace, became im- 
placable in the expansion of its tenderness. Nostromo’s 
return was providential. He did not think of him 
humanely, as of a fellow-creature just escaped from the 
jaws of death. The Capataz for him was the only 


432 


NOSTROMO 


possible messenger to Cayta. The very man. The 
doctor’s misanthropic mistrust of mankind (the bitterer 
because based on personal failure) did not lift him 
sufficiently above common weaknesses. He was under 
the spell of an established reputation. Trumpeted 
by Captain Mitchell, grown in repetition, and fixed 
in general assent, Nostromo’s faithfulness had never 
been questioned by Dr. Monygham as a fact. It was 
not likely to be questioned now he stood in desperate 
need of it himself. Dr. Monygham was human; he 
accepted the popular conception of the Capataz’s 
incorruptibility simply because no word or fact had 
ever contradicted a mere affirmation. It seemed to be 
a part of the man, like his whiskers or his teeth. It 
was impossible to conceive him otherwise. The ques- 
tion was whether he would consent to go on such a 
dangerous and desperate errand. The doctor was ob- 
servant enough to have become aware from the first 
of something peculiar in the man’s temper. He was 
no doubt sore about the loss of the silver. 

“It will be necessary to take him into my fullest con- 
fidence,” he said to himself, with a certain acuteness of 
insight into the nature he had to deal with. 

On Nostromo’s side the silence had been full of black 
irresolution, anger, and mistrust. He was the first to 
break it, however. 

“The swimming was no great matter,” he said. “It 
is what went before — and what comes after that ” 

He did not quite finish what he meant to say, break- 
ing off . short, as though his thought had butted against 
a solid obstacle. The doctor’s mind pursued its own 
schemes with Machiavellian subtlety. He said as. 
sympathetically as he was able — 

“It is unfortunate, Capataz. But no one would 
think of blaming you. Very unfortunate. To begin 


^ the lighthouse 433 

I with, the treasure ought never to have left the mountain. 

I But it was Decoud who however, he is dead. There 

( is no need to talk of him.” 

“No,” assented Nostromo, as the doctor paused, 
“there is no need to talk of dead men. But I am not 
dead yet.” 

You are all right. Only a man of your intrepidity 
could have saved himself.” 

In this Dr. Monygham was sincere. He esteemed 
highly the intrepidity of that man, whom he valued 
but little, being disillusioned as to mankind in general, 
because of the particular instance in which his own man- 
hood had failed. Having had to encounter single- 
handed during his period of eclipse many physical 
dangers, he was well aware of the most dangerous 
element common to them all : of the crushing, paralyzing 
sense of human littleness, which is what really defeats 
a man struggling with natural forces, alone, far from 
the eyes of his fellows. He was eminently fit to appre- 
ciate the mental image he made for himself of the 
Capataz, after hours of tension and anxiety, precipi- 
tated suddenly into an abyss of waters and darkness, 
without earth or sky, and confronting it not only with 
an undismayed mind, but with sensible success. Of 
course, the man was an incomparable swimmer, that 
was known, but the doctor judged that this instance 
testified to a still greater intrepidity of spirit. It was 
pleasing to him; he augured well from it for the success 
of the arduous mission with which he meant to entrust 
the Capataz so marvellously restored to usefulness. 
And in a tone vaguely gratified, he observed — 

“It must have been terribly dark!” 

“It was the worst darkness of the Golfo,” the Capataz 
assented, briefly. He was mollified by what seemed a 
sign of some faint interest in such things as had befallen 


434 


NOSTROMO 


him, and dropped a few descriptive phrases with an 
affected and curt nonchalance. At that moment he 
felt communicative. He expected the continuance 
of that interest which, whether accepted or rejected, 
would have restored to him his personality — the only 
thing lost in that desperate affair. But the doctor, 
engrossed by a desperate adventure of his own, was 
terrible in the pursuit of his idea. He let an exclama- 
tion of regret escape him. 

“I could almost wish you had shouted and shown a 
light.” 

This unexpected utterance astounded the Capataz 
by its character of cold-blooded atrocity. It was as 
much as to say, “I wish you had shown yourself a 
coward; I wish you had had your throat cut for your 
pains.” Naturally he referred it to himself, whereas it 
related only to the silver, being uttered simply and with 
many mental reservations. Surprise and rage rendered 
him speechless, and the doctor pursued, practically 
unheard by Nostromo, whose stirred blood was beating 
violently in his ears. 

“For I am convinced Sotillo in possession of the 
silver would have turned short round and made for some 
small port abroad. Economically it would have been 
wasteful, but still less wasteful than having it sunk. 
It was the next best thing to having it at hand in some 
safe place, and using part of it to buy up Sotillo. But 
I doubt whether Don Carlos would have ever made up 
his mind to it. He is not fit for Costaguana, and that 
is a fact, Capataz.” 

The Capataz had mastered the fury that was like a 
tempest in his ears in time to hear the name of Don 
Carlos. He seemed to have come out of it a changed 
man — a man who spoke thoughtfully in a soft and even 
voice. 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


435 

“And would Don Carlos have been content if I had 
surrendered this treasure?” 

“I should not wonder if they were all of that way of 
thinking now,” the doctor said, grimly. “I was never 
consulted. Decoud had it his own way. Their eyes' 
are opened by this time, I should think. I for one; 
know that if that silver turned up this moment miracu-. 
lously ashore I would give it to Sotillo. And, as things 
stand, I would be approved.” 

“Turned up miraculously,” repeated the Capataz 
very low; then raised his voice. “That, sefior, would 
be a greater miracle than any saint could perform.” 

“I believe you, Capataz,” said the doctor, drily. 

He went on to develop his view of Sotillo’s dangerous 
; influence upon the situation. And the Capataz, listen- 
1 ing as if in a dream, felt himself of as little account as 
. the indistinct, motionless shape of the dead man whom 
' he saw upright under the beam, with his air of listening 
i also, disregarded, forgotten, like a terrible example of 
i neglect. 

I “Is it for an unconsidered and foolish whim that they 
came to me, then?” he interrupted, suddenly. “Had I 
I not done enough for them to be of some account, por 
Dios? Is it that the homhres finos — the gentlemen — 
need not think as long as there is a man of the people 
ready to risk his body and soul? Or, perhaps, we have 
no souls — like dogs?” 

“There was Decoud, too, with his plan,” the doctor 
reminded him again. 

“Si! And the rich man in San Francisco who had 
something to do with that treasure, too — what do I 
know? No! I have heard too many things. It seems 
to me. that everything is permitted to the rich.” 

“I understand, Capataz,” the doctor began. 

“What Capataz?” broke in Nostromo, in a forcible 


36 


NOSTROMO 


but even voice. “The Capataz is undone, destroyed. 
There is no Capataz. Oh, no ! You will find the Capa- 
taz no more.” 

“Come, this is childish!” remonstrated the doctor; 
find the other calmed down suddenly. 

“I have been indeed like a little child,” he muttered. 

And as his. eyes met again the shape of the murdered 
Tiian suspended in his "awful immobility, which seemed 
the uncomplaining immobility of attention, he asked, 
wondering gently — 

“Why did Sotillo give the estrapade to this pitiful 
wretch.^ Do you know.? No torture could have been 
worse than his fear. Killing I can understand. His 
anguish was intolerable to behold. But why should he 
torment him like this.? He could tell no more.” 

“No; he could tell nothing more. Any sane man 
would have seen that. He had told him everything. 
But I tell you what it is, Capataz. Sotillo would not 
believe what he was told. Not everything.” 

“What is it he would not believe.? I cannot under- 
stand.” 

“I can, because I have seen the man. He refuses to 
believe that the treasure is lost.” 

“What.?” the Capataz cried out in a discomposed 
tone. 

“That startles you — eh.?” 

“Am I to understand, senor,” Nostromo went on in a 
deliberate and, as it were, watchful tone, “that Sotillo 
thinks the treasure has been saved by some means.?” 

“No! no! That would be impossible,” said the 
doctor, with conviction; and Nostromo emitted a grunt 
in the dark. “That would be impossible. He thinks 
that the silver was no longer in the lighter when she was 
sunk. He has convinced himself that the whole show 
of getting it away to sea is a mere sham got up to receive 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


437 


Gamacho and his Nationals, Pedrito Montero, Senor 
Puentes, our new.Gefe Politico, and himselL too. Only, 
he says, he is no such fool.” 

“But he is devoid of sense. He is the greatest im- 
becile that ever called himself a colonel in this country 
of evil,” growled Nostromo. 

“He is no more unreasonable than many sensible 
men,” said the doctor. “He has convinced himself 
that the treasure can be found because he desires pas- 
sionately to possess himself of it. And he is also afraid 
of his officers turning upon him and going over to 
Pedrito, whom he has not the courage either to fight 
or trust. Do you see that, Capataz.^ He need fear no 
desertion as long as some hope remains of that enormous 
plunder turning up. I have made it my business to 
keep this very hope up.” 

“You have!” the Capataz de Cargadores repeated 
cautiously. “Well, that is wonderful. And how long 
do you think you are going to keep it up.^” 

“As long as I can.” 

“What does that mean?” 

“I can tell you exactly. As long as I live,” the doc- 
tor retorted in a stubborn voice. Then, in a few words, 
he described the story of his arrest and the circumstances 
of his release. “I was going back to that silly scoundrel 
when we met,” he concluded. 

Nostromo had listened with profound attention. 
“You have made up your mind, then, to a speedy 
death,” he muttered through his clenched teeth. 

“Perhaps, my illustrious Capataz,” the doctor said, 
testily. “You are not the only one here who can look an 
ugly death in the face.” 

“No doubt,” mumbled Nostromo, loud enough to be 
overheard. “There may be even more than two fools 
in this place. Who knows?” 


438 "NOSTROMO 

‘‘And that is my affair,” said the doctor, curtly. 

“As taking out the accursed silver to sea was my 
affair,” retorted Nostromo. “I see, Bueno. Each 
of us has his reasons. But you were the last man I 
conversed with before I started, and you talked to me 
as if I were a fool.” 

Nostromo had a great distaste for the doctor’s 
sardonic treatment of his great reputation. Decoud’s 
faintly ironic recognition used to make him uneasy; 
but the familiarity of a man like Don Martin was 
flattering, whereas the doctor was a nobody. He 
could remember him a penniless outcast, slinking about 
the streets of Sulaco, without a single friend or acquain- 
taince, till Don Carlos Gould took him into the service 
of the mine. 

“You may be very wise,” he went on, thoughtfully, 
staring into the obscurity of the room, pervaded by the 
gruesome enigma of the tortured and murdered Hirsch. 
“But I am not such a fool as when I started. I have 
learned. one thing since, and that is that you are a 
dangerous man.” 

Dr. Monygham was too startled to do more than 
exclaim — 

“What is it you say.^^” 

“If he could speak he would say the same thing,” 
pursued Nostromo, with a nod of his shadowy head sil- 
houetted against the starlit window. 

“I do not understand you,” said Dr. Monygham, 
faintly. 

“No.? Perhaps, if you had not confirmed Sotillo in 
his madness, he would have been in no haste to give the 
estrapade to that miserable Hirsch.” 

The doctor started at the suggestion. But his de- 
votion, absorbing all his sensibilities, had left his heart 
steeled against remorse and pity. Still, for complete 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 439 

relief, he felt the necessity of repelling it loudly and 
contemptuously. 

“Bah! You dare to tell me that, with a man like 
Sotillo. I confess I did not give a thought to Hirsch. 
If I had it would have been useless. Anybody can see 
that the luckless wretch was doomed from the moment 
he caught hold of the anchor. He was doomed, I tell 
you! Just as I myself am doomed — most probably.” 

This is what Dr. Monygham said in answer to Nos- 
tromo s remark, which was plausible enough to prick 
his conscience. He was not a callous man. But the 
necessity, the magnitude, the importance of the task 
he had taken upon himself dwarfed all merely humane 
considerations. He had undertaken it in a fanatical 
spirit. He did not like it. To lie, to deceive, to cir- 
cumvent even the basest of mankind was odious to him. 
It was odious to him by training, instinct, and tradition. 
To do these things in the character of a traitor was ab- 
horrent to his nature and terrible to his feelings. He 
had made that sacrifice in a spirit of abasement. He 
had said to himself bitterly, “I am the only one fit for 
that dirty work.” And he believed this. He was not 
subtle. His simplicity was such that, though he had 
no sort of heroic idea of seeking death, the risk, deadly 
enough, to which he exposed himself, had a sustaining 
and comforting effect. To that spiritual state the 
fate of Hirsch presented itself as part of the general 
atrocity of things. He considered that episode prac- 
tically. What did it mean.? Was it a sign of some dan- 
gerous change in Sotillo’s delusion.? That the man 
should have been killed like this was what the doctor 
could not understand. 

“Yes. But why shot.?” he murmured to himself. 

Nostromo kept very still. 


CHAPTER NINE 


Distracted between doubts and hopes, dismayed by 
the sound of bells pealing out the arrival^ of Pedrito 
Montero, Sotillo had spent the morning in battling 
with his thoughts; a contest to which he was unequal, 
from the vacuity of his’ mind and the violence of his 
passions. Disappointment, greed, anger, and fear 
made a tumult, in the colonel’s breast louder than the 
din of bells in the town. Nothing he had planned had 
come to pass. Neither Sulaco nor the silver of the 
mine had fallen into his hands. He had performed 
no military exploit to secure his position, and had ob- 
tained no enormous booty to make off with. Pedrito 
Montero, either as friend or foe, filled him with dread. 
The sound of bells maddened him. 

Imagining at first that he might be attacked at once, 
he had made his battalion stand to arms on the shore. 
He walked to and fro all the length of the room, stop- 
ping sometimes to gnaw the finger-tips of his right hand 
with a lurid sideways glare fixed on the floor; then, with 
a sullen, repelling glance all round, he would resume 
his tramping in savage aloofness. His hat, horsewhip, 
sword, and revolver were lying on the table. His 
officers, crowding the window giving the view of the 
town gate, disputed amongst themselves the use of his 
field-glass bought last year on long credit from Anzani. 
It passed from hand to hand, and the possessor for the 
time being was besieged by anxious inquiries. 

“There is nothing; there is nothing to see!” he would 
repeat, impatiently. 

m . 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 441 

There was nothing. And when the picket in the 
bushes near the Casa Viola had been ordered to fall 
back upon the main body, no stir of life appeared on the 
•stretch of dusty and arid land between the town and 
the waters of the port. But la’te in the afternoon a 
horseman issuing from the gate was made out riding up 
fearlessly. It was an emissary from Senor Fuentes. 
Being all alone he was allowed to come on. Dismount- 
ing at the great door he greeted the silent bystanders 
with cheery impudence, and begged to be taken up at 
once to the “muy valliente” colonel. 

Senor Fuentes, on entering upon his functions of Gefe 
Politico, had turned his diplomatic abilities to getting 
hold of the harbour as well as of the mine. The man 
he pitched upon to negotiate with Sotillo was a Notary 
Public, whom the revolution had found languishing in 
the common jail on a charge of forging documents. 
Liberated by the mob along with the other “victims 
of Blanco tyranny,” he had hastened to offer his ser- 
vices to the new Government. 

He set out determined to display much zeal and 
eloquence in trying to induce Sotillo to come into town 
alone for a conference with Pedrito Montero. Nothing 
was further from the colonel’s intentions. The mere 
fleeting idea of trusting himself into the famous Ped- 
rito’s hands had made him feel unwell several times. 
It was out of the question — it was madness. And to 
put himself in open hostility was madness, too. It 
would render impossible a systematic search for that 
treasure, for that wealth of silver which he seemed 
to feel somewhere about, to scent somewhere near. 

But where Where Heavens! Where Oh! why had 
he allowed that doctor to go! Imbecile that he was. 
But no! It was the only right course, he reflected dis- 
tractedly, while.the messenger waited downstairs chat- 


442 


NOSTROMO 


ting agreeably to the oflScers. It was in that scoundrelly 
doctor’s true interest to return with positive information. 
But what if anything stopped him.^ A general pro- 
hibition to leave the town, for instance! There would- 
be patrols ! 

The colonel, seizing his head in his hands, turned in 
his tracks as if struck with vertigo. A flash of craven 
inspiration suggested to him an expedient not unknown 
to European statesmen when they wish to delay a diffi- 
cult negotiation. Booted and spurred, he scrambled 
into the hammock with undignified haste. His hand- 
some face had turned yellow with the strain of weighty 
cares- The ridge of his shapely nose had grown sharp; 
the audacious nostrils appeared mean and pinched. 
The velvety, caressing glance of his fine eyes seemed 
dead, and even decomposed; for these almond-shaped, 
languishing orbs had become inappropriately bloodshot 
with much sinister sleeplessness. He addressed the 
surprised envoy of Senor Fiientes in a deadened, ex- 
hausted voice. It came pathetically feeble from under 
a pile of ponchos, which buried his elegant person right 
up to the black moustaches, uncurled, pendant, in sign 
of bodily prostration and mental incapacity. Fever, 
fever — a heavy fever had overtaken the “muy valliente” 
colonel. A wavering wildness of expression, caused by 
the passing spasms of a slight colic which had declared 
itself suddenly, and the rattling teeth of repressed panic, 
had a genuineness which impressed the envoy. It was a 
cold fit. The colonel explained that he was unable 
to think, to listen, to speak. With an appearance of 
superhuman effort the colonel gasped out that he was 
not in a state to return a suitable reply or to execute 
any of his Excellency’s orders. But to-morrow! 
To-morrow ! Ah ! to-morrow ! Let his Excellency Don 
Pedro be without uneasiness. The brave Esmeralda 


443 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 

Regiment held the harbour, held And closing his 

he rolled his aching head like a half-delirious 
invalid under the inquisitive stare of the envoy, who 
was obliged to bend down over the hammock in order 
to catch the painful and broken accents. Meantime, 
Colonel Sotillo trusted that his Excellency’s humanity 
would permit the doctor, the English doctor, to come 
out of town with his case of foreign remedies to attend 
upon him. He begged anxiously his worship the 
Caballero now present for the grace of looking in as he 
passed the Casa Gould, and informing the English 
doctor, who was probably there, that his services were 
immediately required by Colonel Sotillo, lying ill of 
fever in the Custom House. Immediately. Most 
urgently required. Awaited with extreme impatience. 
A thousand thanks. He closed his eyes wearily and 
would not open them again, lying perfectly still, deaf, 
dumb, insensible, overcome, vanquished, crushed, anni- 
hilated by the fell disease. 

But as soon as the other had shut after him the door of 
the landing, the colonel leaped out with a fling of both 
feet in an avalanche of woollen coverings. His spurs 
having become entangled in a perfect welter of ponchos 
he nearly pitched on his head, and did not recover his 
balance till the middle of the room. Concealed behind 
the half-closed jalousies he listened to what went on 
below. 

The envoy had already mounted, and turning to the 
morose officers occupying the great doorway, took off 
his hat formally. 

“Caballeros,” he said, in a very loud tone, “allow me 
to recommend you to take great care of your colonel. It 
has done me much honour and gratiflcation to have seen 
you all, a fine body of men exercising the soldierly virtue 
of patience in this exposed situation, where there is 


444 


NOSTROMO 


much sun, and no water to speak of, while a town full 
of wine and feminine charms is ready to embrace you 
for the brave men you are. Caballeros, I have the 
honour to salute you. There will be much dancing 
to-night in Sulaco. Good-bye!” 

But he reined in his horse and inclined his head side- 
ways on seeing the old major step out, very tall and 
meagre, in a straight narrow coat coming down to his 
ankles as it were the casing of the regimental colours 
rolled round their staff. 

The intelligent old warrior, after enunciating in a 
dogmatic tone the general proposition that the “world 
was full of traitors,” went on pronouncing deliberately a 
panegyric upon Sotillo. He ascribed to him with leis- 
urely emphasis every virtue under heaven, summing 
it all up in an absurd colloquialism current amongst 
the lower class of Occidentals (especially about Esmer- 
alda). “And,” he concluded, with a sudden rise in the 
voice, “a man of many teeth — 'homhre de muchos 
dientes.^ Si, senor. As to us,” he pursued, portentous 
and impressive, “your worship is beholding the finest 
body of officers in the Republic, men unequalled for 
valour and sagacity, homhres de muchos dientes.*'^ 

“What? All of them?” inquired the disreputable 
envoy of Sen or Fuentes, with a faint, derisive smile, 

^‘Todos. Si, sehor,’^ the major affirmed, gravely, 
with conviction. “Men of many teeth.” 

The other wheeled his horse to face the portal re- 
sembling the high gate of a dismal barn. He raised 
himself in his stirrups, extended one arm. He was a 
facetious scoundrel, entertaining for these stupid 
Occidentals a feeling of great scorn natural in a native 
from the central provinces. The folly of Esmeral- 
dians especially aroused his amused contempt. He 
began an oration upon Pedro Montero, keeping a solemn 


446 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 

countenance. He flourished his hand as if introducing 
him to their notice. And when he saw every face set, 
all the eyes flxed upon his lips, he began to shout a sort 
of catalogue of perfections: ‘‘Generous, valorous, 
affable, profound ’’ (he snatched off his hat enthusias- 
tically) — “a statesman, an invincible chief of parti- 
sans — ” He dropped his voice startlingly to a deep, 
hollow note — “and a dentist.” 

He was off instantly at a smart walk; the rigid strad- 
dle of his legs, the turned-out feet, the stiff back, the 
rakish slant of the sombrero above the square, motion- 
less set of the shoulders* expressing an infinite, awe- 
inspiring impudence. 

Upstairs, behind the jalousies, Sotillo did not move 
for a long time. The audacity of the fellow appalled 
him. What were his ofiicers saying below They were 
saying nothing. Complete silence. He quaked. It was 
not thus that he had imagined himself at that stage 
of the expedition. He had seen himself triumphant, 
unquestioned, appeased, the idol of the soldiers, weigh- 
ing in secret complacency the agreeable alternatives 
of power and wealth open to his choice. Alas! How 
different! Distracted, restless, supine, burning with 
fury, or frozen with terror, he felt a dread as fathomless 
as the sea creep upon him from every side. That rogue 
of a doctor had to come out with his information. 
That was clear. It would be of no use to him — alone. 
He could do nothing with it. Malediction! The doc- 
tor would never come out. He was probably under 
arrest already, shut up together with Don Carlos. He 
laughed aloud insanely. Ha! ha! ha! ha! It was 
Pedrito Montero who would get the information. Ha! 
ha! ha! ha! — and the silver. Ha! 

All at once, in the midst of the laugh, he became 
motionless and silent as if turned into stone. He, too. 


446 


NOSTROMOj 

had a prisoner. A prisoner who must, must know the 
real truth. He would have to be made to speak. And 
Sotillo, who all that time had not quite forgotten Hirsch, 
felt an inexplicable reluctance at the notion of proceed- 
ing to extremities. 

He felt a reluctance — part of that unfathomable 
dread that crept on all sides upon him. He remembered 
reluctantly, too, the dilated eyes of the hide merchant, 
his contortions, his loud sobs and protestations. It 
was not compassion or even mere nervous sensibility. 
The fact was that though Sotillo did never for a mo- 
ment believe his story — he could not believe it; nobody 
could believe such nonsense — yet those accents of de- 
spairing truth impressed him disagreeably. They made 
him feel sick. And he suspected also that the man might 
have gone mad with fear. A lunatic is a hopeless sub- 
ject. Bah! A pretence. Nothing but a pretence. 
He would know how to deal with that. 

He was working himself up to the right pitch of 
ferocity. His fine eyes squinted slightly; he clapped 
his hands; a bare-footed orderly appeared noiselessly; 
a corporal, with his bayonet hanging on his thigh and a 
stick in his hand. 

The colonel gave his orders, and presently the miser- 
able Hirsch, pushed in by several soldiers, found him 
frowning awfully in a broad armchair, hat on head, 
knees wide apart, arms akimbo, masterful, imposing, 
irresistible, haughty, sublime, terrible. 

Hirsch, with his arms tied behind his back, had been 
bundled violently into one of the smaller rooms. For 
many hours he remained apparently forgotten, stretched 
lifelessly on the floor. From that solitude, full -of despair 
and terror, he was torn out brutally, with kicks and 
blows, passive, sunk in h ebetu de. He listened to threats 
and admonitions, and afterwards made his usual an- 


447 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 

swers to questions, with his chin sunk on his breast, 
his hands tied behind his back, swaying a little in front 
of Sotillo, and never looking up. When he was forced 
to hold up his head, by means of a bayonet-point prod- 
ding him under the chin, his eyes had a vacant, trance- 
hke stare, and drops of perspiration as big as peas were 
seen hailing down the dirt, bruises, and scratches of 
his white face. Then they stopped suddenly. 

Sotillo looked at him in silence. “Will you depart 
from your obstinacy, you rogue.?” he asked. Already 
a rope, whose one end was fastened to Senor Hirsch’s 
wrists, had been thrown. over a beam, and three soldiers 
held the other end, waiting. He made no answer. 
His heavy lower lip hung stupidly. Sotillo made a 
sign. Hirsch was jerked up off his feet, and a yell of 
despair and agony burst out in the room, filled the pass- 
age of the great buildings, rent the air outside, caused 
every soldier of the camp along the shore to look up 
at the windows, started some of the oflScers in the hall 
babbling excitedly, with shining eyes; others, setting 
their lips, looked gloomily at the floor. 

Sotillo, followed by the soldiers, had left the room. 
The sentry on the landing presented arms. Hirsch went 
on screaming all alone behind the half-closed jalousies 
while the sunshine, reflected from the water of the har- 
bour, made an ever-running ripple of light high up on 
the wall. He screamed with uplifted eyebrows and a 
wide-open mouth — incredibly wide, black, enormous, 
full of teeth — comical. 

In the still burning air of the windless afternoon he 
made the waves of his agony travel as far as the O. S. N. 
Company’s offices. Captain Mitchell on the balcony, 
trying to make out what went on generally, had heard 
him faintly but distinctly, and the feeble and appalling 
sound lingered in his ears after he had retreated indoors 


448 


NOSTROMO 


with blanched cheeks. He had been driven off the 
balcony several times during that afternoon. 

Sotillc^, irritable, moody, walked restlessly about, held 
consultations with his officers, gave contradictory orders 
in this shrill clamour pervading the whole empty edifice. 
Sometimes there would be long and awful silences. 
Several times he had entered the torture-chamber 
where his sword, horsewhip, revolver, and field-glass 
were lying on the table, to ask with forced calmness, 
“Will you speak the truth now.? No.? I can wait.” 
But he could not afford to wait much longer. That 
was just it. Every time he went in and came out with 
a slam of the door, the sentry on the landing presented 
arms, and got in return a black, venomous, unsteady 
glance, which, in reality, saw nothing at all, being 
merely the reflection of the soul within — a soul of 
gloomy hatred, irresolution, avarice, and fury. 

The sun had set when he went in once more. A 
soldier carried in two lighted candles and slunk out, 
shutting the door without noise. 

“Speak, thou Jewish child of the devil! The silver! 
The silver, I say! Where it it.? Where have you 

foreign rogues hidden it.? Confess or ” 

A slight quiver passed up the taut rope from the 
racked limbs, but the body of Senor Hirsch, enterprising 
business man from Esmeralda, hung under the heavy 
beam perpendicular and silent, facing the colonel 
awfully. The inflow of the night air, cooled by the 
snows of the Sierra, spread gradually a delicious fresh- 
ness through the close heat of the room. 

“ Speak — thief — scoundrel — ^picaro — or ” 

Sotillo had seized the riding-whip, and stood with his 
arm lifted up. For a word, for one little word, he felt 
he would have knelt, cringed, grovelled on the floor 
before the drowsy, conscious stare of those fixed eye- 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 449 

balls starting out of the grimy, dishevelled head that 
drooped very still with its mouth closed askew. The 
colonel ground his teeth with rage and struck. The 
rope vibrated leisurely to the blow, like the long string 
of a pendulum starting from a rest. But no swinging 
motion was imparted to the body of Senor Hirsch, 
the well-known hide merchant on the coast. With 
a convulsive effort of the twisted arms it leaped up a few 
inches, curling upon itself like a fish on the end of a line. 
Senor Hirsch s head was flung back on his straining 
throat; his chin trembled. For a moment the rattle 
of his chattering teeth pervaded the vast, shadowy 
room, where the candles made a patch of light round 
the two flames burning side by side. And as Sotillo, 
staying his raised hand, waited for him to speak, with 
the sudden flash of a grin and a straining forward of the 
wrenched shoulders, he spat violently into his lace. 

The uplifted whip fell, and the colonel sprang back 
with a low cry of dismay, as if aspersed by a jet of 
deadly venom. Quick as thought he snatched up his 
revolver, and fired twice. The report and the concus- 
sion of the shots seemed to throw him at once from 
ungovernable rage into idiotic stupor. He stood with 
drooping jaw and stony eyes. What had he done, 
Sangre de Dios ! What had he done.^ He was basely 
appalled at his impulsive act, sealing for ever these lips 
from which so much was to be extorted. What could 
he say.^ How could he explain.^ Ideas of headlong 
flight somewhere, anywhere, passed through his mind; 
even the craven and absurd notion of hiding under 
the table occurred to his cowardice. It was too late; 
his officers had rushed in tumultuously, in a great clatter 
of scabbards, clamouring, with astonishment and 
wonder. But since they did not immediately proceed 
to plunge their swords into his breast, the brazen side 


450 


NOSTROMO 


of his character asserted itself. Passing the sleeve 
of his uniform over his face he pulled himself together, 
His truculent glance turned slowly here and there, 
checked the noise where it fell; and the stiff body of the 
late Senor Hirsch, merchant, after swaying impercepti- 
bly, made a half turn, and came to a rest in the midst 
of awed murmurs and uneasy shuffling. 

A voice remarked loudly, ‘‘Behold a man who will 
never speak again.” And another, from the back 
row of faces, timid and pressing, cried out — 

“Why did you kill him, mi colonel?'^ 

“Because he has confessed everythihg,” answered 
Sotillo, with the hardihood of desperation. He felt 
himself cornered. He brazened it out on the strength 
of his reputation with very fair success. His hearers 
thought him very capable of such an act. They were 
disposed to believe his flattering tale. There is no 
credulity so eager and blind as the credulity of covet- 
ousness, which, in its universal extent, measures the 
moral misery and the intellectual destitution of man- 
kind. Ah! he had confessed everything, this frac- 
tious Jew, this bribon. Good! Then he was no longer 
wanted. A sudden dense guffaw was heard from the 
senior captain — a big-headed man, with little round 
eyes and monstrously fat cheeks which never moved. 
The old major, tall and fantastically ragged like a scare- 
crow, walked round the body of the late Senor Hirsch, 
muttering to himself with ineffable complacency that 
like this there was no need to guard against any future 
treacheries of that scoundrel. The others stared, shift- 
ing from foot to foot, and whispering short remarks 
to each olher. 

Sotillo buckled on his sword and gave curt, peremp- 
tory orders to hasten the retirement decided upon in the 
afternoon. Sinister, impressive, his sombrero pulled 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


451 


right down upon his eyebrows, he marched first through 
the door in such disorder of mind that he forgot utterly 
to provide for Dr. Monygham’s possible return. As 
the ofiScers trooped out after him, one or two looked 
back hastily at the late Senor Hirsch, merchant from 
Esmeralda, left swinging rigidly at rest, alone with the 
two burning candles. In the emptiness of the room 
the burly shadow of head and shoulders on the wall had 
an air of life. 

Below, the troops fell in silently and moved off by 
companies without drum or trumpet. The old scare- 
crow major commanded the rearguard; but the party 
he left behind with orders to fire the Custom House 
(and “burn the carcass of the treacherous Jew where it 
hung”) failed somehow in their haste to set the staircase 
properly alight. The body of the late Senor Hirsch 
dwelt alone for a time m the dismal solitude of the un- 
finished building, resounding weirdly with sudden 
slams and clicks of doors and latches, with rustling 
scurries of torn papers, and the tremulous sighs that 
at each gust of wind passed under the high roof. The 
light of the two candles burning before the perpendicu- 
lar and breathless immobility of the late Senor Hirsch 
threw a gleam afar over land and water, like a signal 
in the night. He remained to startle Nostromo by his 
presence, and to puzzle Dr. Monygham by the mystery 
of his atrocious end. 

“But why shot.?” the doctor again asked himself, 
audibly. This time he was answered by a dry laugh 
from Nostromo. 

“You seem much concerned at a very natural thing, 
senor doctor. I wonder why.? It is very likely that be- 
fore long we shall all get shot one after another, if not 
by Sotillo, then by Pedrito, or Fuentes, or Gamacho. 
And we may even get the estrapade, too, or worse quien 


452 NOSTROMO 

sahe ? — with your pretty tale of the silver you put into 
Sotillo’s head.’’ 

“It was in his head already,” the doctor protested. 
“I only ” 

“Yes. And you only nailed it there so that the devil 
himself — ” 

“That is precisely what I meant to do,” caught up 
the doctor. 

“That is what you meant to do. Bueno. It is as I 
say. You are a dangerous man.” 

Their voices, which without rising had been growing 
quarrelsome, ceased suddenly. The late Senor Hirsch, 
erect and shadowy against the stars, seemed to be wait- 
ing attentive, in impartial silence. 

But Dr. Monygham had no mind to quarrel with Nos- 
tromo. At this supremely critical point of Sulaco’s 
fortunes it was borne upon him at last that this man 
was really indispensable, more indispensable than ever 
the infatuation of Captain Mitchell, his proud dis- 
coverer, could conceive; far beyond what Decoud’s 
best dry raillery about “my illustrious frieiid, the unique 
Capataz de Cargadores,” had ever intended. The 
fellow was unique. He was not “one in a thousand.” 
He was absolutely the only one. The doctor surren- 
dered. There was something in the genius of that 
Genoese seaman which dominated in the destinies of 
great enterprises and of many people, the fortunes of 
Charles Gould, the fate of an admirable woman. At 
this last thought the doctor had to clear his throat be- 
fore he could speak. 

In a completely changed tone he pointed out to the 
Capataz that, to begin with, he personally ran no great 
risk. As far as everybody knew he was dead. It was 
an enormous advantage. He had only to keep out 
of sight in the Casa Viola, where the old Garibaldino 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 453 

was known to be alone — with his dead wife. The 
servants had all run away. No one would think of 
searching for him there, or anywhere else on earth, 
for that matter. 

“That would be very true,” Nostromo spoke up, 
bitterly, “if I had not met you.” 

For a time the doctor kept silent. “Do you mean to 
say that you think I may give you away.?^ ” he asked in 
an unsteady voice. “Why? Why should I do that?” 

“What do I know? Why not? To gain a day per- 
haps. It would take Sotillo a day to give me the estra- 
pade, and try some other things perhaps, before he puts 
a bullet through my heart — as he did to that poor 
wretch here. Why not? ” 

The doctor swallowed with difficulty. His throat 
had gone dry in a moment. It was not from indigna- 
tion. The doctor, pathetically enough, believed that 
he had forfeited the right to be indignant with any one — 
for anything. It was simple dread. Had the fellow 
heard his story by some chance? If so, there was an 
end of his usefulness in that direction. The indispen- 
sable man escaped his influence, because of that indeli- 
ble blot which made him fit for dirty work. A feeling 
as of sickness came upon the doctor. He would have 
given anything to know, but he dared not clear up the 
point. The fanaticism of his devotion, fed on the sense 
of his abasement, hardened his heart in sadness andi 
scorn. 

“Why not, indeed?” he reechoed, sardonically. 
“Then the safe thing for you is to kill me on the spot. 
I would defend myself. But you may just as well know 
I am going about unarmed.” 

“Por Dios!’" said the Capataz, passionately/ ‘You 
fine people are all alike. All dangerous. All betrayers 
of the poor who are your dogs.” 


454 


NOSTROMO 


“You do not understand,” began the doctor, slowly. 

“I understand you all!” cried the other with a violent 
movement, as shadowy to the doctor’s eyes as the per- 
sistent immobility of the late Sen or Hirsch. “A poor 
man amongst you has got to look after himself. I say 
that you do not care for those that serve you. Look 
at me! After all these years, suddenly, here I find 
myself like one of these curs that bark outside the walls 
— without a kennel or a dry bone for my teeth. Ca- 
ramba!’" But he relented with a contemptuous fair- 
ness. “Of course,” he went on, quietly, “I do not sup- 
pose that you would hasten to give me up to Sotillo, 
for example. It is not that. It is that I am nothing! 
Suddenly ” He swung his arm downwards. “Noth- 

ing to any one,” he repeated. 

The doctor breathed freely. “Listen, Capataz,” 
he said, stretching out his arm almost affectionately 
towards Nostromo’s shoulder. “I am going to tell 
you a very simple thing. You are safe because you 
are needed. I would not give you away for any con- 
ceivable reason, because I want you.” 

In the dark Nostromo bit his lip. He had heard 
enough of that. He knew what that meant. No more 
of that for him. But he had to look after himself now, 
he thought. And he thought, too, that it would not 
be prudent to part in anger from his companion. The 
doctor, admitted to be a great healer, had, amongst 
the populace of Sulaco, the reputation of being an evil 
sort of man. It was based solidly on his personal ap- 
pearance, which was strange, and on his rough ironic 
manner — proofs visible, sensible, and incontrovertible 
of the doctor’s malevolent disposition. And Nostromo 
was of the people. So he only grunted incredulously. 

“You, to speak plainly, are the only man,” the doctor 
pursued, “It is in your power to save this town and 


, THE LIGHTHOUSE 455 

everybody from the destructive rapacity of 
men who ” 

“No, seiior,”' said Nostromo, sullenly. “It is not 
in my power to get the treasure back for you to give 
up to Sotillo, or Pedrito, or Gamacho. What do I 
! know.^” 

“Nobody expects the impossible,” was the answer. 

“You have said it yourself — nobody,” muttered 
Nostromo, in a gloomy, threatening tone. 

But pi\ Monygham, full of hope, disregarded the 
I enigmatic words and the threatening tone. To their 
J eyes, accustomed to obscurity, the late Senor Hirsch, 

I growing more distinct, seemed to have come nearer. 
And the doctor lowered his voice in exposing his scheme 
as though afraid of being overheard. 

He was taking the indispensable man into his fullest 
confidence. Its implied flattery and suggestion of great 
risks came with a familiar sound to the Capataz. His 
mind, floating in irresolution and discontent, recognized 
it with bitterness. He understood well that the doctor 
was anxious to save the San Tome mine from annihila- 
tion. He would be nothing without it. It was his 
interest. Just as it had been the interest of Senor 
Decoud, of the Blancos, and of the Europeans to get 
his Cargadores on their side. His thought became 
arrested upon Decoud. What would happen to him.^ 

Nostromo ’s prolonged silence made the doctor un- 
easy. He pointed out, quite unnecessarily, that though 
for the present he was safe, he could not live concealed 
for ever. The choice was between accepting the mission 
to Barrios, with all its dangers and difficulties, and leav- 
ing Sulaco by stealth, ingloriously, in poverty. 

“None of your friends could reward you and protect 
you just now, Capataz. Not even Don Carlos himself.” 

“I would have none of your protection and none of 


456 


NOSTROMO 


your rewards. I only wish I could trust your courage 
and your sense. When I return in triumph, as you 
say, with Barrios, I may find you all destroyed. You 
have the knife at your throat now.” 

It was the doctor’s turn to remain silent in the con- 
templation of horrible contingencies. 

“Well, we would trust your courage and your sense. 
And you, too, have a knife at your throat 

“Ah! And whom am I to thank for that? What 
are your politics and your mines to me — ^your silver and 
your constitutions — your Don Carlos this, and Don 
Jose that ” 

“I don’t know,” burst out the exasperated doctor. 
“There are innocent people in danger whose little 
finger is worth more than you or I and all the Ribier- 
ists together. I don’t know. You should have asked 
yourself before you allowed Decoud to lead you into 
all this. It was your place to think like a man; but 
if you did not think then, try to act like a man now. 
Did you imagine Decoud cared very much for what 
would happen to you?” 

“No more than you care for what will happen to me,” 
muttered the other. 

“No; I care for what will happen to you as little as I 
care for what will happen to myself.” 

“And all this because you are such a devoted Ribier- 
ist?” Nostromo said in an incredulous tone. 

“All this because I am such a devoted Ribierist,” 
repeated Dr. Monygham, grimly. 

Again Nostromo, gazing abstractedly at the body of 
the late Senor Hirsch, remained silent, thinking that the 
doctor was a dangerous person in more than one sense. 
It was impossible to trust him. 

“Do you speak in the name of Don Carlos?” he asked 
at last. 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 457 

• TT^ doctor said, loudly, without hesita- 

tion. He must come forward now. He must,” he 
added in a mutter, which Nostromo did not catch. 
“What did you say, seflor.''” 

The doctor started. “ I say that you must be true to 
yourself, Capataz. It would be worse than folly to fail 
c now.” 

^ “True to myself,” repeated Nostromo. “How do 
ft you know that I would not be true to myself if I told 
oyou to go to the devil with your propositions 

“I do not know. Maybe you would,” the doctor 

i said, with a roughness of tone intended to hide the 

ii sinking of his heart and the faltering of his voice. “All 
I I know is, that you had better get away from here. 

0 Some of SotHlo’s men may turn up here looking for 
if me.” 

He slipped off the table, listened intently. The 

1 Capataz, too, stood up. 

' “Suppose I went to Cayta, what would you do mean- 
i time.f^” he asked. 

“I would go to Sotillo directly you had left — in the 
\ way I am thinking of.” 

j “A very good way — if only that engineer-in -chief 
) consents. Remind him, senor, that I looked after the 
! old rich Englishman who pays for the railway, and that 
I saved the lives of some of his people that time when a 
" gang of thieves came from the south to wreck one of his 
< pay-trains. It was I who discovered it all at the risk 
of my life, by pretending to enter into their plans. Just 
I as you are doing with Sotillo.” 

“Yes. Yes, of course. But I can offer him better 
I arguments,” the doctor said, hastily. “Leave it to me.” 
“Ah, yes! True. T am nothing.” 

“Not at all. You are everything.” 

They moved a few paces towards the door. Behind 


458 


NOSTROMO 


them the late Sen or Hirsch preserved the immobility 
of a disregarded man. 

“That will be all right. I know what to say to the 
engineer,” pursued the doctor, in a low tone, “My 
difficulty will be with Sotillo.” 

And Dr. Monygham stopped short in the doorway as 
if intimidated by the difficulty. He had made the sacri- 
fice of his life. He considered this a fitting opportunity. 
But he did not want to throw his life away too soon. 
In his quality of betrayer of Don Carlos’ confidence, 
he would have ultimately to indicate the hiding-place 
of the treasure. That would be the end of his deception, 
and the end of himself as well, at the hands of the infuri- 
ated colonel. He wanted to delay him to the very last 
moment; and he had been racking his brains to invent 
some place of concealment at once plausible and diffi- 
cult of access. 

He imparted his trouble to Nostromo, and con- 
cluded — 

“Do you know what, Capataz.? I think that when 
the time comes and some information must be given, 
I shall indicate the Great Isabel. That is the best 
place I can think of. What is the matter.^ ” 

A low exclamation had escaped Nostromo. The 
doctor waited, surprised, and after a moment of pro- 
found silence, heard a thick voice stammer out “Utter 
folly,” and stop with a gasp. 

“Why folly.?” 

“Ah! You do not see it,” began Nostromo, scath- 
ingly, gathering scorn as he went on. “Three men in 
half an hour would see that no ground had been dis- 
turbed anywhere on that island. Do you think that 
such a treasure can be buried without leaving traces 
of the work — eh! sen or doctor.? Why! you would not 
gain half a day more before having your throat cut by 


459 


t the lighthouse 

jlSotillo. The Isabel! What stupidity! What miser- 
lable invention! Ah! you are all alike, you fine men 
r of intelligence. All you are fit for is to betray men of 
Ithe people into undertaking deadly risks for objects 
that you are not even sure about. If it comes off you 
get the benefit. If not, then it does not matter. He 

^ is only a dog. Ah! Madre de Dios^ I would ’’ 

I He shook his fists above his head. 

|| The doctor was overwhelmed at first by this fierce, 

I hissing vehemence. 

j “ Well ! It seems to me pn your own showing that the 
|| men of the people are no mean fools, too,” he said, sul- 
I lenly. “No, but come. You are so clever. Have you 
I a better place?” 

I Nostromo had calmed down as quickly as he had 
I flared up. 

I “I am clever enough for that,” he said, quietly, al- 
Imost with indifference. “You want to tell him of a 
I hiding-place big enough to take days in ransacking — a 
: place where a treasure of silver ingots can be buried 
; without leaving a sign on the surface.” 

, “And close at hand,” the doctor put in. 

“Just so, sen or. , Tell him it is sunk.” 

I “This has the merit of being the truth,” the doctor 
! said, contemptuously. “He will not believe it.” 

' “You tell him that it is sunk where he may hope to 
, lay his hands on it, and he will believe you quick enough. 

I Tell him it has been sunk in the harbour in order to be 
i recovered afterwards by divers. Tell him you found out 
that I had orders from Don Carlos Gould to lower the 
I cases quietly overboard somewhere in a line between 
the end of the jetty and the entrance. The depth is 
not too great there. He has no divers, but he has a ship, 
boats, ropes, chains, sailors — of a sort. Let him fish 
for the silver. Let him set his fools to drag backwards 


460 


NOSTROMO 


and forwards and crossways while he sits and watches 
till his eyes drop out of his head.” 

“Really, this is an admirable idea,” muttered the 
doctor. 

“Si. You tell him that, and see whether he will not 
believe you ! He will spend days in rage and torment— 
and still he will believe. He will have no thought for 
anything else. He will not give up till he is driven off — - 
why, he may even forget to kill you. He will neither 
eat nor sleep. He ” 

“The very thing! The very thing!” the doctor 
repeated in an excited whisper. “ Capataz, I be- 
gin to believe that you are a great genius in your 
way.” 

Nostromo had paused; then began again in a changed 
tone, sombre, speaking to himself as though he had 
forgotten the doctor’s existence. 

“There is something in a treasure that fastens upon a 
man’s mind. He will pray and blaspheme and still 
persevere, and will curse the day he ever heard of it, 
and will let his last hour come upon him unawares, still 
believing that he missed it only by a foot. He will see 
it every time he closes his eyes. He will never forget 

it till he is dead — and even then Doctor, did you 

ever hear of the miserable gringos on Azuera, that can- 
not die.^ Ha! ha! Sailors like myself. There is no 
getting away from a treasure that once fastens* upon 
your mind.” 

“You are a devil of a man, Capataz. It is the most 
plausible thing.” 

Nostromo pressed his arm. 

“ It will be worse for him than thirst at sea or hunger 
in a town full of people. Do you know what that is.? 
He shall suffer greater torments than he inflicted upon 
that terrified wretch who had no invention. None! 


i THE LIGHTHOUSE 461 

none ! Not like me. I could have told Sotillo a deadly 
dale for very little pain.” 

! He laughed wildly and turned in the doorway towards 
I the body of the late Senor Hirsch, an opaque long blotch 
in the semi-transparent obscurity of the room between 
the two tall parallelograms of the windows full of stars. 

“You man of fear!” he cried. “You shall be avenged 
by me — Nostromo. Out of my way, doctor! Stand 
I aside — or, by the suffering soul of a woman dead without 
confession, I will strangle you with my two hands.” 

He bounded downwards into the black, smoky hall. 
’With a grunt of astonishment. Dr. Monygham threw 
himself recklessly into the pursuit. At the bottom of 
I the charred stairs he had a fall, pitching forward on his 
^ face with a force that would have stunned a spirit less 
[intent upon a task of love and devotion. He was up 
I in a moment, jarred, shaken, with a queer impression 
' , of the terrestrial globe having been flung at his head in 
, the dark. But it wanted more than that to stop Dr. 
Monygham ’s body, possessed by the exaltation of self- 
sacrifice; a reasonable exaltation, determined not to lose 
! whatever advantage chance put into its way. He ran 
with headlong, tottering swiftness, his arms going like a 
windmill in his effort, to keep his balance on his crippled 
feet. He lost his hat; the tails of his open gaberdine 

I flew behind him. He had no mind to lose sight of the 
indispensable man. But it was a long time, and a long 
way from the Custom House, before he managed to 
seize his arm from behind, roughly, out of breath, 
j “Stop! Are you mad.^” 

I Already Nostromo was walking slowly, his head 
I dropping, as if checked in his pace by the weariness 
I of irresolution. 

I “What is that to you? Ah! I forgot you want me 
for something. Always. Siempre Nostromo.” 


462 NOSTROMO 

“What do you mean by talking of- strangling me?” 
panted the doctor. 

“What do I mean? I mean that the king of the 
devils himself has sent you out of this town of cowards 
and talkers to meet me to-night of all the nights of my 
life.” 

Under the starry sky the Albergo d’ltalia Una 
emerged, black and low, breaking the dark level of the 
plain. Nostromo stopped altogether. 

“The priests say he is a tempter, do they not?” he 
added, through his clenched teeth. 

“My good man, you drivel. The devil has nothing 
to do with this. Neither has the town, which you may 
call by what name you please. But Don Carlos Gould 
is neither a coward nor an empty talker. You will 
admit that?” He waited. “Well?” 

“Could I see Don Carlos?” 

“Great heavens! No! Why? What for?” exclaimed 
the doctor in agitation. “I tell you it is madness. I 
will not let you go into the to^vn for anything.” 

“I must.” 

“You must not!” hissed the doctor, fiercely, almost 
beside himself with the fear of the man doing away with 
his usefulness for an imbecile whim of some sort. “I 
tell you you shall not. I would rather ” 

He stopped at loss for words, feeling fagged out, 
powerless, holding on to Nostromo’s sleeve, absolutely 
for support after his run. 

“I am betrayed!” muttered the Capataz to himself; 
and the doctor, who overheard the last word, made an 
effort to speak calmly. 

“That is exactly what would happen to you. You 
would be betrayed.” 

He thought with a sickening dread that the man was 
so well known that he could not escape recognition. 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 463 

The house of the Senor Administrador was beset by 
spies, no doubt. And even the very servants of the 
casa were not to be trusted. “Reflect, Capataz,” he 
said, impressively. . . . “What are you laughing at.?” 

“I am laughing to think that if somebody that did not 
approve of my presence in town, for instance — ^you 
understand, senor doctor — if somebody were to give 
me up to Pedrito, it would not be beyond my power to 
make friends even with him. It is true. What do you 
think of that.?” 

“You are a man of infinite resource, Capataz,” said 
Dr. Monygham, dismally. “I recognize that. But 
the town is full of talk about you; and those few Car- 
gadores that are not in hiding with the railway people 
have been shouting ‘Viva Montero’ on the Plaza all 
day.” 

“My poor Cargadores!” muttered Nostromo. “Be- 
trayed! Betrayed!” 

“I understand that on the wharf you were pretty free 
in laying about you with a stick amongst your poor 
Cargadores,” the doctor said in a grim tone, which 
showed that he was recovering from his exertions. 
“Make no mistake. Pedrito is furious at Seiior 
Ribiera’s rescue, and at having lost the pleasure of 
shooting Decoud. Already there are rumours in the 
town of the treasure having been spirited away. To 
have missed that does not please Pedrito either; but 
let me tell you that if you had all that silver in your 
hand for your ransom it would not save you.” 

Turning swiftly, and catching the doctor by the shoul- 
ders, Nostromo thrust his face close to his. 

“ Maladetta ! You follow me speaking of the treasure. 
You have sworn my ruin. You were the last man who 
looked upon me before I went out with it. And Sidoni 
the engine-driver says you have an evil eye.” 


464 


NOSTROMO 


“He ought to know. I saved his broken leg for him 
last year,” the doctor said, stoically. He felt on his 
shoulders the weight of these hands famed amongst the 
populace for snapping thick ropes and bending horse- 
shoes. “And to you I offer the best means of saving 
yourself — let me go — and of retrieving your great reputa- 
tion. You boasted of making the Capataz de Carga- 
dores famous from one end of America to the other 
about this wretched silver. But I bring you a better 
opportunity — let me go, hombre!” 

Nostromo released him abruptly, and the doctor 
feared that the indispensable man would run off again. 
But he did not. He walked on slowly. The doctor 
hobbled by his side till, within a stone’s throw from the 
Casa Viola, Nostromo stopped again. 

Silent in inhospitable darkness, the Casa Viola seemed 
to have changed its nature; his home appeared to repel 
him with an air of hopeless and inimical mystery. The 
doctor said — 

“You will be safe there. Go in, Capataz.” 

“How can I go in?” Nostromo seemed to ask himself 
in a low, inward tone. “She cannot unsay what she 
said, and I cannot undo what I have done.” 

“I tell you it is all right. Viola is all alone in there. 
I looked in as I came out of the town. You will be 
perfectly safe in that house till you leave it to make your 
name famous on the Campo. I am going now to ar- 
range for your departure with the engineer-in-chief, 
and I shall bring you news here long before daybreak.” 

Dr. Monygham, disregarding, or perhaps fearing to 
penetrate the meaning of Nostromo’s silence, clapped him 
lightly on the shoulder, and starting off with his smart, 
lame walk, vanished utterly at the third or fourth hop 
in the direction of the railway track. Arrested between 
the two wooden posts for people to fasten their horses to. 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 465 

Nostromo did not move, as if he, too, had been planted 
solidly in the ground. At the end of half an hour he 
lifted his head to the deep baying of the dogs at the rail- 
way yardsjv which had burst out suddenly, tumultuous 
and deadened as if coming from under the plain. That 
lame doctor with the evil eye had got there pretty fast. 

Step by step Nostromo approached the Albergo 
dTtalia Una, which he had never known so lightless, so 
silent, before. The door, all black in the pale wall, 
stood open as he had left it twenty-four hours before, 
when he had nothing to hide from the world. He re- 
mained before it, irresolute, like a fugitive, like a man 
betrayed. Poverty, misery, starvation! Where had 
he heard these words The anger of a dying woman 
had prophesied that fate for his folly. It looked as if 
it would come true very quickly. And the leperos 
would laugh — she had said. Yes, they would laugh 
if they knew that the Capataz de Cargadores was at 
the mercy of the mad doctor whom they could remem- 
ber, only a few years ago, buying cooked food from a 
stall on the Plaza for a copper coin — like one of them- 
selves. 

At that moment the notion of seeking Captain Mit- 
chell passed through his mind. He glanced in the direc- 
tion of the jetty and saw a small gleam of light in the 
O.S.N. Company’s building. The thought of lighted 
windows was not attractive. Two lighted windows 
had decoyed him into the empty Custom House, only 
to fall into the clutches of that doctor. No ! He would 
not go near lighted windows again on that night. 
Captain Mitchell was there. And what could he be 
told.? That doctor would worm it all out of him as if 
he were a child. 

On the threshold he called out “Giorgio!” in an 
undertone. Nobody Answered. He stepped in. “0/a/ 


466 


NOSTROMO 


viejo! Are you there? . . . ” In the impenetrable 

darkness his head swam with the illusion that the ob- 
scurity of the kitchen was as vast as the Placid Gulf, 
and that the floor dipped forward like a sinking lighter. 
''Ola! viejo r’ he repeated, falteringly, swaying where he 
stood. His hand, extended to steady himself, fell 
upon the table. Moving a step forward, he shifted 
it, and felt a box of matches under his fingers. He 
fancied he had heard a quiet sigh. He listened for a 
moment, holding his breath ; then, with trembling hands, 
tried to strike a light. 

The tiny piece of wood flamed up quite blindingly 
at the end of his fingers, raised above his blinking eyes. 
A concentrated glare fell upon the leonine white head 
of old Giorgio against the black fire-place — showed him 
leaning forward in a chair in staring immobility, sur- 
rounded, overhung, by great masses of shadow, his 
legs crossed, his cheek in his hand, an empty pipe in 
the corner of his mouth. It seemed hours before he at- 
tempted to turn his face; at the very moment the match 
went out, and he disappeared, overwhelmed by the 
shadows, as if the walls and roof of the desolate house 
had collapsed upon his white head in ghostly silence. 

Nostromo heard him stir and utter dispassionately 
the words — 

“It may have been a vision.” 

“No,” he said, softly. “It is no vision, old man.” 

A strong chest voice asked in the dark — 

“Is that you I hear, Giovann’ Battista?” 

"Si, viejo. Steady. Not so loud.” 

After his release by Sotillo, Giorgio Viola, attended to 
the very door by the good-natured engineer-in-chief, 
had reentered his house, which he had been made to 
leave almost at the very moment of his wife’s death. 
All was still. The lamp above was burning. He nearly 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


467 


called out to her by name; and the thought that no call 
from him would ever again evoke the answer of her 
voice, made him drop heavily into the chair with a 
loud groan, wrung out by the pain as of a keen blade 
piercing his breast. 

The rest of the night he made no sound. The dark- 
ness turned to grey, and on the colourless, clear, glassy 
dawn the jagged sierra stood out flat and opaque, as if 
cut out of paper. 

The enthusiastic and severe soul of Giorgio Viola, 
sailor, champion of oppressed humanity, enemy of kings, 
and, by the grace of Mrs. Gould, hotel -keeper of the 
Sulaco harbour, had descended into the open abyss of 
desolation amongst the shattered vestiges of his past. 
He remembered his wooing between two campaigns 
a single short week in the season of gathering olives. 
Nothing approached the grave passion of that time but 
the deep, passionate sense of his bereavement. He dis- 
covered all the extent of his dependence upon the si- 
lenced voice of that woman. It was her voice that he 
missed. Abstracted, busy, lost in inward contempla- 
tion, he seldom looked at his wife in those later years. 
The thought of his girls was a matter of concern, not 
of consolation. It was her voice that he would miss. 
And he remembered the other child — the little boy who 
died at sea. Ah! a man would have been something to 
lean upon. And, alas! even Gian’ Battista — he of whom, 
and of Linda, his wife had spoken to him so anxiously 
before she dropped off into her last sleep on earth, he on 
whom she had called aloud to save the children, just 
before she died — even he was dead! 

And the old man, bent forward, his head in his hand, 
sat through the day in immobility and solitude. He 
never heard the brazen roar of the bells in town. When 
it ceased the earthenware filter in the corner of the 


468 


NOSTROMO 


kitchen kept on its swift musical drip, drip into the 
great porous jar below. 

Towards sunset he got up, and with slow movements 
disappeared up the narrow staircase. His bulk filled it; 
and the rubbing of his shoulders made a small noise as of 
a mouse running behind the plaster of a wall. While 
he remained up there the house was as dumb as a grave. 
Then, with the same faint rubbing noise, he descended. 
He had to catch at the chairs and tables to regain his 
seat. He seized his pipe off the high mantel of the 
fire-place — but made no attempt to reach the tobacco — 
thrust it empty into the corner of his mouth, and sat 
down again in the same staring pose. The sun of Pe- 
drito’s entry into Sulaco, the last sun of Senor Hirsch’s 
life, the first of Decoud’s solitude on the Great Isabel, 
passed over the Albergo dTtalia Una on its way to the 
west. The tinkling drip, drip of the filter had ceased, 
the lamp upstairs had burnt itself out, and the night 
beset Giorgio Viola and his dead wife with its ob- 
scurity and silence that seemed invincible till the 
Capataz de Cargadores, returning from the dead, put 
them to flight with the splutter and flare of a match. 

“Si, viejo. It is me. Wait.” 

Nostromo, after barricading the door and closing the 
shutters carefully, groped upon a shelf for a candle, and 
lit it. 

Old Viola had risen. He followed with his eyes in the 
dark the sounds made by Nostromo. The light dis- 
closed him standing without support, as if the mere 
presence of that man who was loyal, brave, incorrupti- 
ble, who was all his son would have been, were enough 
for the support of his decaying strength. 

He extended his hand grasping the briar-wood pipe, 
whose bowl was charred on the edge, and knitted his 
bushy eyebrows heavily at the light. 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


469 


“You have returned,” he said, with shaky dignity. 
“iVh! Very well! I ” 

He broke off. Nostromo, leaning back against the 
table, his arms folded on his breast, nodded at him 
slightly. 

“You thought I was drowned! No! The best dog 
of the rich, of the aristocrats, of these fine men who 
can only talk and betray the people, is not dead yet.” 

The Garibaldino, motionless, seemed to drink in the 
sound of the well-known voice. His head moved 
slightly once as if in sign of approval; but Nostromo saw 
clearly that the old man understood nothing of the 
words. There was no one to understand; no one he 
could take into the confidence of Decoud’s fate, of his 
own, into the secret of the silver. That doctor was an 
enemy of the people* — a tempter. . . . 

Old Giorgio’s heavy frame shook from head to foot 
with the effort to overcome his emotion at the sight of 
that man, who had shared the intimacies of his domestic 
life as though he had been a grown-up son. 

“She believed you would return,” he said, solemnly. 

Nostromo raised his head. 

“She was a wise woman. How could I fail to come 
back^ ?” 

He finished the thought mentally: “Since she has 
prophesied for me an end of poverty, misery, and starva- 
tion.” These words of Teresa’s anger, from the cir- 
cumstances in which they had been uttered, like the 
cry of a soul prevented from making its peace with 
God, stirred the obscure superstition of personal 
fortune from which even the greatest genius amongst 
men of adventure and action is seldom free. They 
reigned over Nostromo’s mind with the force of a potent 
malediction. And what a curse it was that which her 
words had laid upon him! He had been orphaned so 


470 


NOSTROMO 


young that he could remember no other woman whom 
he called mother. Henceforth there would be no enter- 
prise in which he would not fail. The spell was working 
already. Death itself would elude him now. . . . 

He said violently — 

“Come, viejo! Get me something to eat. I am 
hungry! Sangre de Dios! The emptiness of my belly 
makes me lightheaded.” 

With his chin dropped again upon his bare breast 
above his folded arms, barefooted, watching from under 
a gloomy brow the movements of old Viola foraging 
amongst the cupboards, he seemed as if indeed fallen 
under a curse — a ruined and sinister Capataz. 

Old Viola walked out of a dark corner, and, without a 
word, emptied upon the table out of his hollowed palms 
a few dry crusts of bread and half a raw onion. 

While the Capataz began to devour his beggar’s 
fare, taking up with stony-eyed voracity piece after 
piece lying by his side, the Garibaldino went off, and 
squatting down in another corner filled an earthenware 
mug with red wine out of a wicker-covered demijohn. 
With a familiar gesture, as when serving customers in 
the cafe, he had thrust his pipe between his teeth to 
have his hands free. 

The Capataz drank greedily. A slight flush deepened 
the bronze of his cheek. Before him, Viola, with a 
turn of his white and massive head towards the stair- 
case, took his empty pipe out of his mouth, and pro- 
nounced slowly — 

“After the shot was fired down here, which killed her 
as surely as if the bullet had struck her oppressed heart, 
she called upon you to save the children. Upon you, 
Gian’ Battista.” 

The Capataz looked up. 

“Did she do that. Padrone? To save the children! 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 471 

They are with the English senora, their rich benefac- 
tress. Hey! old man of the people. Thy benefac- 
tress. . . 

“I am old,” muttered' Giorgio Viola. “An English- 
woman was allowed to give a bed to Garibaldi lying 
wounded in prison. The greatest man that ever lived. 
A man of the people, too — a sailor. I may let another 
keep a roof over my head. ... I am old. I 

may let her. Life lasts too long sometimes.” 

“And she herself may not have a roof over her head 
before many days are out, unless I . . . What do 

you say.^ Am I to keep a roof over her head? Am I 
to try ^and save all the Blancos together with her?” 

You shall do it,” said old Viola in a strong voice. 
“You shall do it as my son would have. . . .” 

** Thy son, vie jo! .... There never has been a 
man like thy son. Ha, I must try. . . . But what 

if it were only a part of the curse to lure me on? . . . 

And so she called upon me to save^ — and then ?” 

“She spoke no more.” The heroic follower of Gari- 
baldi, at the thought of the eternal stillness and silence 
fallen upon the shrouded form stretched out on the bed 
upstairs, averted his face and raised his hand to his 
furrowed brow. “She was dead before I could seize 
her hands,” he stammered out, pitifully. 

Before the wide eyes of the Capataz, staring at the 
doorway of the dark staircase, floated the shape of the 
Great Isabel, like a strange ship in distress, freighted 
with enormous wealth and the solitary life of a man. 
It was impossible for him to do anything. He could 
only hold his tongue, since there was no one to trust. 
The treasure would be lost, probably — unless Decoud. 

. . . And his thought came abruptly to an end. 

He perceived that he could not imagine in the least 
what Decoud was likely to do. 


472 


NOSTROMO 


Old Viola had not stirred. And the motionless Capa- 
taz dropped his long, soft eyelashes, which gave to the 
upper part of his fierce, black- whiskered face a touch of 
feminine ingenuousness. The silence had lasted for a 
long time. 

“God rest her soul!” he murmured, gloomily. 


CHAPTER TEN 


The next day was quiet in the morning, except for the 
faint sound of firing to the northward, in the direction of 
Los Hatos. Captain JMitchell had listened to it from 
his balcony anxiously. The phrase, “In my delicate 
position as the only consular agent then in the port, 
everything, sir, everything was a just cause for anxiety,” 
had its place in the more or less stereotyped relation of 
the * ‘historical events” which for the next few years was 
at the service of distinguished strangers visiting Sulaco. 
The mention of the dignity and neutrality of the flag, 
so difficult to preserve in his position, “right in the thick 
of these events between the lawlessness of that pirati- 
cal villain Sotillo and the more regularly established 
but scarcely less atrocious tyranny of his Excellency 
Don Pedro Montero,” came next in order. Captain 
Mitchell was not the man to enlarge upon mere dangers 
much. But he insisted that it was a memorable day. 
On that day, towards dusk, he had seen “that poor 
fellow of mine — Nostromo. The sailor whom I discov- 
ered, and, I may say, made, sir. The man of the fa- 
mous ride to Cayta, sir. An historical event, sir!” 

Regarded by the O. S. N. Company as an old and 
faithful servant’. Captain Mitchell was allowed to attain 
the term of his usefulness in ease and dignity at the head 
of the enormously extended service. The augmenta- 
tion of the establishment, with its crowds of clerks, an 
office in town, the old ofiice in the harbour, the division 
into departments — passenger, cargo, lighterage, and 
so on — secured a greater leisure for his last years in the 
473 


474 


NOSTROMO 


regenerated Sulaco, the capital of the Occidental Re- 
public. Liked by the natives for his good nature and 
the formality of his manner, self-important and simple, 
known for years as a “friend of our country,” he felt 
himself a personality of mark in the town. Getting 
up early for a turn in the market-place while the gigan- 
tic shadow of Higuerota was still lying upon the fruit 
and flower stalls piled up with masses of gorgeous colour- 
ing, attending easily to current affairs, welcomed in 
houses, greeted by ladies on the Alameda, with his 
entry into all the clubs and a footing'in the Casa Gould, 
he led his privileged old bachelor, man-about-town 
existence with great comfort and solemnity. But on 
mail-boat days he was down at the Harbour Oflfice at 
an early hour, with his own gig, manned by a smart 
crew in white and blue, ready to dash off and board 
the ship directly she showed her bows between the 
harbour heads. 

It would be into the Harbour Office that he would 
lead some privileged passenger he had brought off in his 
own boat, and invite him to take a seat for a moment 
while he signed a few papers. And Captain Mitchell, 
seating himself at his desk, would keep on talking hos- 
pitably — 

“There isn’t much time if you are to see everything 
in a day. We shall be off in a moment. We’ll have 
lunch at the Amarilla Club — though I belong also to 
the Anglo-American — mining engineers and business 
men, don’t you know — and to the Mirliflores as well, 
a new club — English, French, Italians, all sorts — lively 
young fellows mostly, who wanted to pay a compliment 
to an old resident, sir. But we’ll lunch at the Amarilla. 
Interest you, I fancy. Real thing of the country. Men 
of the first families. The President of the Occidental 
Republic himself belongs to it, sir. Fine old bishop 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


475 


with a broken nose in the patio. Remarkable piece 
of statuary, I believe. Cavaliere Parrochetti — you 
know Parrochetti, the famous Italian sculptor — was 
working here for two years — thought very highly of 
our old bishop. . . . There! I am very much at 

your service now.” 

Proud of his experience, penetrated by the sense of 
historical importance of men, events, and buildings, he 
talked pompously in jerky periods, with slight sweeps 
of his short, thick arm, letting nothing “escape the 
attention ” of his privileged captive. 

“Lot of building going on, as you observe. Before 
the Separation it was a plain of burnt grass smothered 
in clouds of dust, with an ox-cart track to our Jetty. 
Nothing more. This is the Harbour Gate. Picturesque, 
is it not.^ Formerly the town stopped short there. 
We enter now the Calle de la Constitution. Observe 
the old Spanish houses. Great dignity. Eh.^ I sup- 
pose it’s just as it was in the time of the Viceroys, ex- 
cept for the pavement. Wood blocks now. Sulaco 
National Bank there, with the sentry boxes each side 
of the gate. Casa Avellanos this side, with all the 
ground-floor windows shuttered. A wonderful woman 
lives there — Miss Avellanos — the beautiful Antonia. 
A character, sir! A historical woman! Opposite 
— Casa Gould. Noble gateway. Yes, the Goulds 
of the original Gould Concession, that all the world 
knows of now. I hold seventeen of the thousand-dollar 
shares in the Consolidated San Tome mines. All the 
poor savings of my lifetime, sir, and it will be enough 
to keep me in comfort to the end of my days at home 
when I retire. I got in on the ground-floor, you see. 
Don Carlos, great friend of mine. Seventeen shares — 
quite a little fortune to leave behind one, too. I have 
a niece — married a parson — most worthy man, incum^ 


476 


NOSTROMO 


bent of a small parish in Sussex; no end of children. I 
was never married myself. A sailor should exercise 
self-denial. Standing under that very gateway, sir, 
with some young engineer-fellows, ready to defend 
that house where we had received so much kindness 
and hospitality, I saw the first and last charge of 
Pedrito’s horsemen upon Barrios’s troops, who had just 
taken the Harbour Gate. They could not stand the 
new rifles brought out by that poor Decoud. It was a 
murderous fire. In a moment the street b^ame 
blocked with a mass of dead men and horses. They 
never came on again.” 

And all day Captain Mitchell would talk like this 
to his more or less willing victim — 

“The Plaza. I call it magnificent. Twice the area 
of Trafalgar Square.” • 

From the very centre, in the blazing sunshine, he 
pointed out the buildings — 

“ The Intendencia, now President’s Palace — Cabildo, 
where the Lower Chamber of Parliament sits. You 
notice the new houses on that side of the Plaza? Com- 
pania Anzani, a great general store, like those coopera- 
tive things at home. Old Anzani was murdered by the 
National Guards in front of his safe. It was even for 
that specific crime that the deputy Gamacho, com- 
manding the Nationals, a bloodthirsty and savage 
brute, was executed publicly by garrotte upon the sen- 
tence of a court-martial ordered by Barrios. Anzani’s 
nephews converted the business into a company. 
All that side of the Plaza had been burnt; used to be 
colonnaded before. A terrible fire, by the light of which 
I saw the last of the fighting, the llaneros flying, the 
Nationals throwing their arms down, and the miners of 
San Tome, all Indians from the Sierra, rolling by like a 
torrent to the sound of pipes and cymbals, green flags 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 477 

^ wild mass of men in white ponchos and green 
hats, on foot, on mules, on donkeys. Such a sight, sir, 
will never be seen again. The miners, sir, had marched 
upon the town, Don Pepe leading on his black horse, 
and their Very wives in the rear on burros, screaming 
encouragement, sir, and beating tambourines. I re- 
member one of these women had a green parrot seated 
on her shoulder, as calm as a bird of stone. They had 
just saved their Senor Administradorj for Barrios, 
though he ordered the assault at once, at night, too', 
would have been too late. Pedrito Montero had Don 
Carlos led out to be shot — like his uncle many years ago 
— and then, as Barrios said afterwards, ‘Sulaco would 
not have been worth fighting for.’ Sulaco without the 
Concession was nothing; and there were tons and tons 
of dynamite distributed all over the mountain with 
detonators arranged, and an old priest. Father Roman, 
standing by to annihilate the San Tome mine at the 
first news of failure. Don Carlos had made up his 
mind not to leave it behind, and he had the right 
men to see to it, too.” 

Thus Captain Mitchell would talk in the middle of 
the Plaza, holding over his head a white umbrella with a 
green lining; but inside the cathedral, in the dim light, 
with a faint scent of incense floating in the cool at- 
mosphere, and here and there a kneeling female figure, 
black or all white, with a veiled head, his lowered voice 
became solemn and impressive. 

“Here,” he would say, pointing to a niche in the wall 
of the dusky aisle, “you see the bust of Don Jose Aveb 
lanos, ‘Patriot and Statesman,’ as the inscription says, 
‘Minister to Courts of England and Spain, etc., etc., 
died in the woods of Los Hatos worn out with his life- 
long struggle for Right and Justice at the dawn of the 
New Era.’ A fair likeness. Parrochetti’s work from 


478 


NOSTROMO 


some old photographs and a pencil sketch by Mrs. 
Gould. I was well acquainted with that distinguished 
Spanish- American of the old school, a true Hidalgo, 
beloved by everybody who knew him. The marble 
medallion in the wall, in the antique style, representing 
a veiled woman seated with her hands clasped loosely 
over her knees, commemorates that unfortunate young 
gentleman who sailed out with Nostromo on that fatal 
night, sir. See, ‘To the memory of Martin Decoud, 
his betrothed Antonia Avellanos.’ Fraijk, simple, 
noble. There you have that lady, sir, as she is. An 
exceptional woman. Those who thought she would 
give way to despair were mistaken, sir. She has been 
blamed in many quarters for not having taken the veil. 
It was expected of her. But Dona Antonia is not the 
stulf they make nuns of. Bishop Corbelan, her uncle, 
lives with her in the Corbelan town house. He is a 
fierce sort of priest, everlastingly worrying the Govern- 
ment about the old Church lands and convents. I be- 
lieve they think a lot of him in Rome. Now let us go 
to the Amarilla Club, just across the Plaza, to get some 
lunch.” 

Directly outside the cathedral on the very top of the 
noble flight of steps, his voice rose pompously, his arm 
found again its sweeping gesture. 

^'Porvenir, over there on that first floor, above those 
French plate-glass shop-fronts; our biggest daily. Con- 
servative, or, rather, I should say. Parliamentary. We 
have the Parliamentary party here of which the actual 
Chief of the State, Don Juste Lopez, is the head; a very 
sagacious man, I think. A first-rate intellect, sir. The 
Democratic party in opposition rests mostly, I am sorry 
to say, on these socialistic Italians, sir, with their secret 
societies, camorras, and such-like. There are lots of 
Italians settled here on the railway lands, dismissed 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


479 


navvies, mechanics, and so on, all along the trunk line. 
There are whole villages of Italians on the Campo. 
And the natives, too, are being drawn into these ways 
. . . American bar.^^ Yes. And over there you can 

see another. New Yorkers mostly frequent that 

one Here we are at the Amarilla. Observe the 

bishop at the foot of the stairs to the right as we go in.’’ 

And the lunch would begin and terminate its lavish 
and leisurely course at a little table in the gallery, Cap- 
tain Mitchell nodding, bowing, getting up to speak for a 
moment to different officials in black clothes, merchants 
in jackets, officers in uniform, middle-aged Caballeros 
from the Campo — sallow, little, nervous men, and fat, 
placid, swarthy men, and Europeans or North Ameri- 
cans of superior standing, whose faces looked very white 
amongst the majority of dark complexions and black, 
glistening eyes. 

Captain Mitchell would lie back in the chair, casting 
around looks of satisfaction, and tender over the table a 
case full of thick cigars. 

“Try a weed with your coffee. Local tobacco. The 
black coffee you get at the Amarilla, sir, you don’t meet 
anywhere in the world. We get the bean from a famous 
cafeteria in the foot-hills, whose owner sends three sacks 
every year as a present to his fellow members in remem- 
brance of the fight against Camacho’s Nationals, carried 
on from these very windows by the caballeros. He was 
in town at the time, and took part, sir, to the bitter end. 
It arrives on three mules — ^not in the common way, by 
rail; no fear! — right into the patio, escorted by mounted 
peons, in charge of the Mayoral of his estate, who walks 
upstairs, booted and spurred, and delivers it to our 
committee formally with the words, ‘For the sake of 
those fallen the third of May.’ We call it Tres de Mayo 
coffee. Taste it.” • 


480 


NOSTROMO 


Captain Mitchell, with an expression as though mak- 
ing ready to hear a sermon in a church, would lift the 
tiny cup to his lips. And the nectar would be sipped 
to the bottom during a restful silence in a cloud of cigar 
smoke. 

“Look at this man in black just going out,” he would 
begin, leaning forward hastily. “This is the famous 
Hernandez, Minister of War. The Times’ special 
correspondent, who wrote that striking series of letters 
calling the Occidental Republic the ‘Treasure House of 
the World,’ gave a whole article to him and the force 
he has organized — the renowned Carabineers of the 
Campo.” 

Captain Mitchell’s guest, staring curiously, would see 
a figure in a long-tailed black coat walking gravely, 
with downcast eyelids in a long, composed face, a 
brow furrowed horizontally, a pointed head, whose 
grey hair, thin at the top, combed down carefully on 
all sides and rolled at the ends, fell low on the neck 
and shoulders. This, then, was the famous bandit of 
whom THurope had heard with interest. He put on a 
high-crowned sombrero with a wide flat brim; a rosary 
of wooden beads was twisted about his right wrist. 
And Captain Mitchell would proceed — 

“The protector of the Sulaco refugees from the rage of 
Pedrito. As general of cavalry with Barrios he distin- 
guished himself at the storming of Tonoro, where Senor 
Fuentes was killed with the last remnant of the Mon- 
terists. He is the friend and humble servant of Bishop 
Corbelan. Hears three Masses every day. I bet 
you he will step into the cathedral to say a prayer or two 
on his way home to his siesta.” 

He took several puffs at his cigar in silence; then, in 
his best important manner, pronounced — 

“The Spanish race, sir, is prolific of remarkable char- 


481 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 

s acters in every rank of life. ... I propose we go 
i now into the billiard-room, which is cool, for a quiet 
chat. There’s never anybody there till after five. I 
i could tell you episodes of the Separationist revolution 
that would astonish you. When the great heat’s over, 
we’ll take a turn on the Alameda.” 

The programme went on relentless, like a law of 
Nature. The turn on the Alameda was taken with 
slow steps and stately remarks. 

‘'All the great world of Sulaco here, sir.” Captain 
Mitchell bowed right and left with no end of formality; 
then with animation, “Dona Emilia, Mrs. Gould’s 
carriage. Look. Always white mules. The kindest, 
most gracious woman the sun ever shone upon. A 
great position, sir. A great position. First lady in 
Sulaco — far before the President’s wife. And worthy 
of it.” He took off his hat; then, with a studied 
change of tone, added, negligently, that the man in 
black by her side, with a high white collar and a scarred, 
snarly face, was Dr. Monygham, Inspector of State 
Hospitals, chief medical ofiicer of the Consolidated San 
Tome mines. “A familiar of the house. Everlast- 
ingly there. No wonder. The Goulds made him. 
Very clever man and all that, but I never liked him. 
Nobody does. I can recollect him limping about the 
streets in a check shirt and native sandals with a water- 
melon under his arm — all he would get to eat for the 
day. A big-wig now, sir, and as nasty as ever. How- 
ever . . . There’s no doubt he played his part 

fairly well at the time. He saved us all from the deadly 
incubus of Sotillo, where a more particular man might 
have failed ” 

His arm went up. 

“The equestrian statue that used to stand on the 
pedestal over there has been removed. It was an 


482 


NOSTROMO 


anachronism,” Captain Mitchell commented, obscurely. 
“There is some talk of replacing it by a marble shaft 
commemorative of Separation, with angels of peace at 
the four corners, and bronze Justice holding an even 
balance, all gilt, on the top. Cavaliere Parrochetti 
was asked to make a design, which you can see framed 
under glass in the Municipal Sala. Names are to be 
engraved all round the base. Well! They could do 
no better than begin with the name of Nostromo. He 
has done for Separation as much as anybody else, and,” 
added Captain Mitchell, “has got less than many others 
by it — when it comes to that.” lie dropped on to a 
stone seat under a tree, and tapped invitingly at the 
place by his side. “He carried to Barrios the letters 
from Sulaco which decided the General to abandon 
Cayta for a time, and come back to our help here by sea. 
The transports were still in harbour fortunately. Sir, 
I did not even know that my Capataz de Cargadores 
was alive. I had no idea. It was Dr. Monygham 
who came upon him, by chance, in the Custom House, 
evacuated an hour or two before by the wretched Sotillo. 
I was never told; never given a hint, nothing — as if 
I were unworthy of confidence. Monygham arranged 
it all. He went to the railway yards, and got admission 
to the engineer-in-chief, who, for the sake of the Goulds 
as much as for anything else, consented to let an engine 
make a dash down the line, one hundred and eighty 
miles, with Nostromo aboard. It was the only way to 
get him off. In the Construction Camp at the rail- 
head, he obtained a horse, arms, some clothing, and 
started alone on that marvellous ride — four hundred 
miles in six days, through a disturbed country, ending 
by the feat of passing through the Monterist lines out- 
side Cayta. The history of that ride, sir, would make a 
most exciting book. He carried all our lives in his 



THE 483 

pocket. Devotion, courage, fidelity, intellig^ were 
not enough. Of course, he was perfectly i^arless and 
incorruptible. But a man was wanted that would 
know how to succeed. He was that man, sir. On the 
fifth of May, being practically a prisoner in the Har- 
bour Oflace of my Company, I suddenly heard the whis- 
tle of an engine in the railway yards, a quarter of a 
mile away. I could not believe my ears. I made one 
jump on to the balcony, and beheld a locomotive under 
a great head of steam run out of the yard gates, screech- 
ing like mad, enveloped in a white cloud, and then, just 
abreast of old Viola’s inn, check almost to a standstill. 
I made out, sir, a man — I couldn’t tell who — dash out 
of the Albergo d’ltalia Una, climb into the cab, and 
then, sir, that engine seemed positively to leap clear of 
the house, and was gone in the twinkling of an eye. 
As you blow a candle out, sir! There was a first-rate 
driver on the foot-plate, sir, I can tell you. They were 
fired heavily upon by the National Guards in Rincon 
and one other place. Fortunately the line had not 
been torn up. In four hours they reached the Construc- 
tion Camp. Nostromo had his start. . . . The 

rest you know. You’ve got only to look round you. 
There are people on this Alameda that ride in their 
carriages, or even are alive at all to-day, because years 
ago I engaged a runaway Italian sailor for a foreman of 
our wharf simply on the strength of his looks. And 
that’s a fact. You can’t get over it, sir. On the seven- 
teenth of May, just twelve days after I saw the man 
from the Casa Viola get on the engine, and wondered 
what it meant, Barrios’s transports were entering this 
harbour, and the ‘Treasure House of the World,’ as 
The Times man calls Sulaco in his book, was saved in- 
tact for civilization — for a great future, sir. Pedrito, 
with Hernandez on the west, and the San Tome miners 


NOSTROMO 


484 

pressing on the land gate, was not able to oppose the | 
landing. He had been sending messages to Sotillo | 
for a week to join him. Had Sotillo done so there ) 
would have been massacres and proscription that would ( 
have left no man or woman of position alive. But ( 
that’s where Dr. Monygham comes in. Sotillo, blind 
and deaf to everything, stuck on board his steamer | 
watching the dragging for silver, which he believed to J 
be sunk at the bottom of the harbour. They say that ; 
for the last three days he was out of his mind raving j 
and foaming with disappointment at getting nothing, j 
flying about the deck, and yelling curses at the boats ^ 
with the drags, ordering them in, and then suddenly ' 
stamping his foot and crying out, ‘And yet it is there! I 
1 see it! I feel it!’ | 

“He was preparing to hang Dr. Monygham (whom he j 
had on board) at the end of the after-derrick, when the i 
first of Barrios’s transports, one of our own ships at | 
that, steamed right in, and ranging close alongside ■ 
opened a small-arm fire without as much preliminaries 
as a hail. It was the completest surprise in the world, 
sir. They were too astounded at first to bolt below, j 
Men were falling right and left like ninepins. It’s a j 
miracle that Monygham, standing on the after-hatch 
with the rope already round his neck, escaped being 
riddled through and through like a sieve. He told me 
since that he had given himself up for lost, and kept on 
yelling with all the strength of his lungs : ‘ Hoist a white i 
flag! Hoist a white flag!’ Suddenly an old major ^ 
of the Esmeralda regiment, standing by, unsheathed ; 
his sword with a shriek: ‘Die, perjured traitor!’ and ran 
Sotillo clean through the body, just before he fell him- 
self shot through the head.” 

Captain Mitchell stopped for a while. 

“Begad, sir! I could spin you a yarn for hours. 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 485 

I But it’s time we started off to Rincon. It would not do 
■ lor you to pass through Sulaco and not see the lights of 
the San Tom6 mine, a whole mountain ablaze like a 
j lighted palace above the dark Campo. It’s a fash- 
ji lonable drive. . . .But let me tell you one little 
I ^ecdote, sir; just to show you. A fortnight or more 
J later, when Barrios, declared Generalissimo, was gone 
I in pursuit of Pedrito away south, when the Provisional 
Junta, with Don Juste Lopez at its head, had promul- 
gated the new Constitution, and our Don Carlos 
Gould was packing up his trunks bound on a mission to 
San Francisco and Washington (the United States, sir, 
were the first great power to recognize the Occidental 
Republic) — a fortnight later, I say, when we were 
I beginning to feel that our heads were safe on our 
shoulders, if I may express myself so, a prominent man, 
a large shipper by our line, came to see me on business, 
and, says he, the first thing: ‘I say. Captain Mitchell, 
is that fellow’ (meaning Nostromo) ‘still the Capataz of 
your Cargadores or not? ’ ‘ What’s the matter? ’ says I. 

‘Because, if he is, then I don’t mind; I send and receive 
a good lot of cargo by your ships; but I have observed 
him several days loafing about the wharf, and just now 
he stopped me as cool as you please, with a request for 
a cigar. Now, you know, my cigars are rather special, 
and I can’t get them so easily as all that.’ ‘I hope 
you stretched a point,’ I said, very gently. ‘Why, yes. , 
But it’s a confounded nuisance. The fellow’s ever- 
lastingly cadging for smokes.’ Sir, I. turned my eyes 
away, and then asked, ‘ Weren’t you one of the prisoners 
in the Cabildo?’ ‘You know very well I was, and in 
chains, too,’ says he. ‘And under a fine of fifteen 
thousand dollars?’ He coloured, sir, because it got 
about that he fainted from fright when they came to 
arrest him, and then behaved before Fuentes in a man- 


486 


NOSTROMO 


ner to make the very policianos, who had dragged him 
there by the hair of his head, smile at his cringing. 
‘Yes,’ he says, in a sort of shy way. ‘Why.^^’ ‘Oh, 
nothing. You stood to lose a tidy bit,’ says I, ‘even 
if you saved your life. . . . But what can I do 

for you.^’ He never even saw the point. Not he. 
And that’s how the world wags, sir.” 

He rose a little stiffly, and the drive to Rincon would 
be taken with only one philosophical remark, uttered 
by the merciless cicerone, with his eyes fixed upon the 
lights of San Tome, that seemed suspended in the dark 
night between earth and heaven. 

“A great power, this, for good and evil, sir. A great 
power.” 

And the dinner of the Mirliflores would be eaten, 
excellent as to cooking, and leaving upon the traveller’s 
mind an impression that there were in Sulaco many 
pleasant, able young men with salaries apparently 
too large for their discretion, and amongst them a few, 
mostly Anglo-Saxon, skilled in the art of, as the saying 
is, “taking a rise” out of his kind host. 

With a rapid, jingling drive to the harbour in a two- 
wheeled machine (which Captain Mitchell called a cur- 
ricle) behind a fleet and scraggy mule beaten all the 
time by an obviously Neapolitan driver, the cycle 
would be nearly closed before the lighted-up offices of 
the O. S. N. Company, remaining open so late because 
of the steamer. Nearly — but not quite. 

“Ten o’clock. Your ship won’t be ready to leave till 
half -past twelve, if by then. Come in for a brandy- 
and-soda and one more cigar.” 

And in the superintendent’s private room the privi- 
leged passenger by the Ceres^ or Juno, or Pallas, stunned 
and as it were annihilated mentally by a sudden surfeit 
of sights, sounds, names, facts, and complicated infor- 


! THE LIGHTHOUSE 487 

^ mation imperfectly apprehended, would listen like a 
! tired child to a fairy tale; would hear a voice, familiar 
and surprising in its pompousness, tell him, as if from 
I another world, how there was **in this very harbour’’ 

! an international naval demonstration, which put an 
I' end to the Costaguana-Sulaco War. How the United 
States cruiser, Powhattan, was the first to salute the 
I Occidental flag white, with a wreath of green laurel 
i in the middle encircling a yellow amarilla flower. Would 
j hear how General Montero, in less than a month after 
I proclaiming himself Emperor of Costaguana, was shot 
dead (during a solemn and public distribution of orders 
I and crosses) by a young artillery officer, the brother of 
I his then mistress. 

“The abominable Pedrito, sir, fled the country,” the 
voice would say. And it would continue: “A captain 
of one of our ships told me lately that he recognized 
Pedrito the Guerrillero, arrayed in purple slippers and a 
velvet smoking-cap with a gold tassel, keeping a dis- 
orderly house in one of the southern ports.” 

“Abominable Pedrito! Who the devil was he?” 
would wonder the distinguished bird of passage 
hovering on the confines of waking and sleep with reso- 
lutely open eyes and a faint but amiable curl upon his 
lips, from between which stuck out the eighteenth or 
twentieth cigar of that memorable day. 

“ He appeared to me in this very room like a haunting 
ghost, sir” — Captain Mitchell was talking of his Nos- 
tromo with true warmth of feeling and a touch of wist- 
ful pride. “You may imagine, sir, what an effect it 
produced on me. He had come round by sea with 
Barrios, of course. And the first thing he told me after 
I became fit to hear him was that he had picked up 
the lighter’s boat floating in the gulf! He seemed quite 
overcome by the circumstance. And a remarkable 


488 


NOSTROMO 


enough circumstance it was, when you remember that 
it was then sixteen days since the sinking of the silver. 
At once I could see he was another man. He stared 
at the wall, sir, as if there had been a spider or some- 
thing running about there. The loss of the silver 
preyed on his mind. The first thing he asked me about 
was whether Dona Antonia had heard yet of Decoud’s 
death. His voice trembled. I had to tell him that 
Dona Antonia, as a matter of fact, was not then back 
in town yet. Poor girl! And just as I was making 
ready to ask him a thousand questions, with a sudden, 
‘Pardon me, senor,’ he cleared out of the office alto- 
gether, I did not see him again for three days. I was 
terribly busy, you know. It seems that he wandered 
about in and out of the town, and on two nights turned 
up to sleep in the baracoons of the railway people. 
He seemed absolutely indifferent to what went on. I 
asked him on the wharf, ‘When are you going to take 
hold again, Nostromo.? There will be plenty of work 
for the Cargadores presently.’ 

“‘Senor,’ says he, looking at me in a slow, inquisitive 
manner, ‘would it surprise you to hear that I am too 
tired to "work just yet.f^ And what work could I do now.f^ 
How can I look my Cargadores in the face after losing a 
lighter ’ 

“I begged him not to think any more about the silver, 
and he smiled. A smile that went to my heart, sir. ‘ It 
was no mistake," I told him. ‘It was a fatality. A 
thing that could not be helped.’ ' Si, si!' he said, and 
turned away. I thought it best to leave him alone for a 
bit to get over it. Sir, it took him years really, to get 
over it. I was present at his interview with Don Car- 
los. I must say that Gould is rather a cold man. He 
had to keep a tight hand on his feelings, dealing with 
thieves and rascals, in constant danger of ruin for him- 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


489 


; self and wife for so many years, that it had become a 
i second nature. They looked at each other for a long 
time. Don Carlos asked what he could do for him, in 
i his quiet, reserved way. 

“ ‘My name is known from one end of Sulaco to the 
^ other,’ he said, as quiet as the other. ‘What more can 
you do for me.^^ ’ That was all that passed on that occa- 
sion. Later, however, there was a very fine coasting 
schooner for sale, and Mrs. Gould and I put our heads 
together to get her bought and presented to him. 
It was done, but he paid all the price back within the 
i next three years. Business was booming all along this 
seaboard, sir. Moreover, that man always succeeded 
: in everything except in saving the silver. Poor Dona 
' Antonia, fresh from her terrible experiences in the 
woods of Los Hatos, had an interview with him, too. 
i Wanted to hear about Decoud: what they said, what 
i they did, what they thought up to the last on that fatal 
: night. Mrs. Gould told me his manner was perfect 
‘ for quietness and sympathy. Miss Avellanos burst 
i into tears only when he told her how Decoud had hap- 
: pened to say that his plan would be a glorious success, 
j . . . And there’s no doubt, sir, that it is. It is a 

j success.” 

' The cycle was about to close at last. And while 
I the privileged passenger, shivering with the pleasant 
1 anticipations of his berth, forgot to ask himself, 
i “What on earth Decoud’s plan could be.^’ Captain 
I Mitchell was saying, “Sorry we must part so soon. 
Your intelligent interest made this a pleasant day to 
me. I shall see you now on board. You had a 
glimpse of the ‘Treasure House of the World. A 
very good name that.” And the coxswain’s voice at 
the door, announcing that the gig was ready, closed the 
cycle 


490 


NOSTROMO 


Nostromo had, indeed, found the lighter’s boat, 
which he had left on the Great Isabel with Decoud, 
floating empty far out in the gulf. He was then on 
the bridge of the first of Barrios’s transports, and within 
an hour’s steaming from Sulaco. Barrios, always de- 
lighted with a feat of daring and a good judge of cour- 
age, had taken a great liking to the Capataz. During 
the passage round the coast the General kept Nostromo 
near his person, addressing him frequently in that 
abrupt and boisterous manner which was the sign of his 
high favour. 

Nostromo’s eyes were the first to catch, broad on the 
bow, the tiny, elusive dark speck, which, alone with the 
forms of the Three Isabels right ahead, appeared on 
the flat, shimmering emptiness of the gulf. There are 
times when no fact should be neglected as insigniflcant; 
a small boat so far from the land might have had some 
meaning worth finding out. At a nod of consent from 
Barrios the transport swept out of her course, passing 
near enough to ascertain that no one manned the little 
cockle-shell. It was merely a common small boat gone 
adrift with her oars in her. But Nostromo, to whose 
mind Decoud had been insistently present for days, had 
long before recognized with excitement the dinghy of 
the lighter. 

There could be no question of stopping to pick up that 
thing. Every minute of time was momentous with the 
lives and futures of a whole town. The head of the lead- 
ing ship, with the General on board, fell off to her 
course. Behind her, the fleet of transports, scattered 
haphazard over a mile or so in the offing, like the finish 
of an ocean race, pressed on, all black and smoking on 
the western sky. 

“Mi General,” Nostromo’s voice rang out loud, but 
quiet, from behind a group of oflficers, “I should like to 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 491 

save that little boat. Par Dios, 1 know her. She 
; belongs to my Company.” 

And, por Dios,'' guffawed Barrios, in a noisy, good- 
humoured voice, “you belong to me. I am going to 
rnake you a captain of cavalry directly we get within 
sight of a horse again.” 

“I can swim far better than I can ride, mi General,” 
cried Nostromo, pushing through to the rail with a set 
stare in his eyes. “Let me ” 

“Let you.? What a conceited fellow that is,” ban- 
tered the General, jovially, without even looking at him. 

Let him go! Ha! ha! ha! He wants me to admit 
that we cannot take Sulaco without him! Ha! ha! 
ha ! Would you like to swim off to her, my son.? ” 

A tremendous shout from one end of the ship to the 
other stopped his guffaw. Nostromo had leaped over- 
i board; and his black head bobbed up far away already 
from the ship. The General muttered an appalled 
''Cielo! Sinner that I am!” in a thunderstruck tone. 
One anxious glance was enough to show him that Nos- 
tromo was swimming with perfect ease; and then he 
thundered terribly, “No! no! We shall not stop to 
pick up this impertinent fellow. Let him drown — 
that mad Capataz.” 

Nothing short of main force would have kept Nos- 
tromo from leaping overboard. That empty boat, 
coming out to meet him mysteriously, as if rowed by 
an invisible spectre, exercised the fascination of, some 
sign, of some warning, seemed to answer in a startling 
and enigmatic way the persistent thought of a treasure 
and of a man’s fate. He would have leaped if there 
had been death in that half-mile of water. It was as 
smooth as a pond, and for some reason sharks are un- 
known in the Placid Gulf, though on the other side of 
the Punta Mala the coastline swarms with them. 


492 


NOSTROMO 


The Capataz seized hold of the stern and blew with 
force. A queer, faint feeling had come over him while 
he swam. He had got rid of his boots and coat in the 
water. He hung on for a time, regaining his breath. In 
the distance the transports, more in a bunch now, held 
on straight for Sulaco, with their air of friendly contest, 
of nautical sport, of a regatta; and the united smoke of 
their funnels drove like a thin, sulphurous fogbank 
right over his head. It was his daring, his courage, his 
act that had set these ships in motion upon the sea, 
hurrying on to save the lives and fortunes of the Blan- 
cos, the taskmasters of the people; to save the San 
Tome mine; to save the children. 

With a vigorous and skilful effort he clambered over 
the stern. The very boat! No doubt of it; no doubt 
whatever. It was the dinghy of the lighter No. 3 — 
the dinghy left with Martin Decoud on the Great Isabel 
SO that he should have some means to help himself if 
nothing could be done for him from the shore. And 
here she had come out to meet him empty and inexpli- 
cable. What had become of Decoud.^ The Capataz 
made a minute examination. He looked for some 
scratch, for some mark, for some sign. All he discov- 
ered was a brown stain on the gunwale abreast of the 
thwart. He bent his face over it and rubbed hard 
with his finger. Then he sat down in the stern sheets, 
passive, with his knees close together and legs aslant. 

Streaming from head to foot, with his hair and whisk- 
ers hanging lank and dripping and a lustreless stare 
fixed upon the bottom boards, the Capataz of the Su- 
laco Cargadores resembled a drowned corpse come up 
from the bottom to idle away the sunset hour in a small 
boat. The excitement of his adventurous ride, the 
excitement of the return in time, of achievement, of 
success, all these excitements centred round the asso- 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 493 

I: dated ideas of the great treasure and of the only other 
man who knew of its existence, had departed from him. 

1 To the very last moment he had been cudgelling his 
brains as to how he could manage to visit the Great 
I Isabel without loss of time and undetected. For the 
idea of secrecy had come to be connected with the 
treasure so closely that even to Barrios himself he had 
refrained from mentioning the existence of Decoud 
and of the silver on the island. The letters he carried 
to the General, however, made brief mention of the 
loss of the lighter, as having its bearing upon the sit- 
uation in Sulaco. In the circumstances, the one- 
eyed tiger-slayer, scenting battle from afar, had not 
wasted his time in making inquiries from the messenger 
In fact, Barrios, talking with Nostromo, assumed that 
both Don Martin Decoud and the ingots of San Tome 
were lost together, and Nostromo, not questioned di- 
rectly, had kept silent, under the influence of some in- 
1 definable forih of resentment and distrust. Let Don 
' Martin speak of everything with his own lips — was 
what he told himself mentally. 

And now, with the means of gaining the Great Isabel 
thrown thus in his way at the earliest possible moment, 

! his excitement had departed, as when the soul takes 
flight leaving the body inert upon an earth it knows no 
■ more. Nostromo did not seem to know the gulf. 
For a long time even his eyelids did not flutter once 
upon the glazed emptiness of his stare. Then slowly, 
without a limb having stirred, without a twitch of 
muscle or quiver of an eyelash, an expression, a living 
expression came upon the still features, deep thought 
crept into the empty stare — as if an outcast soul, a 
quiet, brooding soul, finding that untenanted body in 
its way, had come in stealthily to take possession. 

The Capataz frowned: and in the immense stillness 


494 


NOSTROMO 


of sea, islands, and coast, of cloud forms on the sky and | 
trails of light upon the water, the knitting of that brow I 
had the emphasis of a powerful gesture. Nothing 
else budged for a long time; then the Capataz shook 
his head and again surrendered himself to the universal 
repose of all visible things. Suddenly he seized the 
oars, and with one movement made the dinghy spin 
round, head-on to the Great Isabel. But before he 
began to pull he bent once more over the brown stain i 
on the gunwale. I 

“I know that thing/’ he muttered to himself, with a 
sagacious jerk of the head. “That’s blood.” 

His stroke was long, vigorous, and steady. Now and 
then he looked over his shoulder at the Great Isabel, 
presenting its low cliff to his anxious gaze like an im- 
penetrable face. At last the stem touched the strand. 
He flung rather than dragged the boat up the little 
beach. At once, turning his back upon the sunset, he 
plunged with long strides into the ravine, making the ! 
water of the stream spurt and fly upwards at every j| 
step, as if spurning its shallow, clear, murmuring spirit 1 
with his feet. He wanted to save every moment of day- 
light. 

A mass of earth, grass, and smashed bushes had fallen 
down very naturally from above upon the cavity under ; 
the leaning tree. Decoud had attended to the conceal- i 
ment of the silver as instructed, using the spade with t 
some intelligence. But Nostromo’s half-smile of ap- 
proval changed into a scornful curl of the lip by the i 
sight of the spade itself flung there in full view, as if in 
utter carelessness or sudden panic, giving away the 
whole thing. Ah! They were all alike in their folly, 
these homhres fi nos that invented laws and governments 
and barren tasks for the people. 

The Capataz picked up the spade, and with the feel of 


495 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 

the handle in his palm the desire to have a look at the 
horse-hide boxes of treasure came upon him suddenly. 
In a very few strokes he uncovered the edges and cor- 
ners of several; then, clearing away more earth, became 
aware that one of them had been slashed with a knife. 

He exclaimed at that discovery in a stifled voice, and 
dropped on his knees with a look of irrational appre- 
hension over one shoulder, then over the other. The 
stiff hide had closed, and he hesitated before he pushed 
his hand through the long slit and felt the ingots inside. 
There they were. One, two, three. Yes, four gone. 
Taken away. Four ingots. But who? Decoud? No- 
body else. And why? For what purpose? For what 
cursed fancy? Let him explain. Four ingots carried 
off in a boat, and — blood! 

In the face of the open gulf, the sun, clear, unclouded, 
unaltered, plunged into the waters in a grave and un- 
troubled mystery of self-immolation consummated far 
from all mortal eyes, with an infinite majesty of silence 
and peace. Four ingots short! — and blood! 

The Capataz got up slowly. 

“He might simply have cut his hand,” he muttered. 
“But, then ” 

He sat down on the soft earth, unresisting, as if he 
had been chained to the treasure, his drawn-up legs 
clasped in his hands with an air of hopeless submission, 
like a slave set on guard. Once only he lifted his head 
smartly: the rattle of hot musketry fire had reached his 
ears, like pouring from on high a stream of dry peas 
upon a drum. After listening for a while, he said, 
half aloud — 

“He will never come back to explain.” 

And he lowered his head again. 

“Impossible!” he muttered, gloomily. 

The sounds of firing died out. The loom of a great 


496 


NOSTROMO 


conflagration in Sulaco flashed up red above the coast, 
played on the clouds at the head of the gulf, seemed to 
touch with a ruddy and sinister reflection the forms of 
the Three Isabels. He never saw it, though he raised 
his head. 

“But, then, I cannot know,’’ he pronounced, dis- 
tinctly, and remained silent and staring for hours. 

He could not know. Nobody was to know. As 
might have been supposed, the end of Don Martin 
Decoud never became a subject of speculation for any 
one except Nostromo. Had the truth of the facts 
been known, there would always have remained the 
question, Why.^ Whereas the version of his death 
at the sinking of the lighter had no uncertainty of 
motive. The young apostle of Separation had died 
striving for his idea by an ever-lamented accident. 
But the truth was that he died from solitude, the enemy 
known but to few on this earth, and whom only the 
simplest of us are fit to withstand. The brilliant Cos- 
taguanero of the boulevards had died from solitude and 
want of faith in himself and others. 

For some good and valid reasons beyond mere human 
comprehension, the sea-birds of the gulf shun the Isa- 
bels. The rocky head of Azuera is their haunt, whose 
stony levels and chasms resound with their wild and 
tumultuous clamour as if they were for ever quarrelling 
over the legendary treasure. 

At the end of his first day on the Great Isabel, 
Decoud, turning in his lair of coarse grass, under the 
shade of a tree, said to himself — 

“I have not seen as much as one single bird all day.” 

And he had not heard a sound, either, all day but that 
one now of his own muttering voice. It had been a 
day of absolute silence — the first he had known in his 
life. And he had not slept a wink. Not for all these 


497 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 

wakeful nights and the days of fighting, planning, talk- 
: ing; not for all that last night of danger and hard physi- 
cal toil upon the gulf, had he been able to close his eyes 
for a moment. And yet from sunrise to sunset he had 
been lying prone on the ground, either on his back or on 
his face. 

He stretched himself, and with slow steps descended 
into the gully to spend the night by the side of the sil- 
ver. If Nostromo returned — as he might have done at 
any moment — it was there that he would look first; 
and night would, of course, be the proper time for an at- 
tempt to communicate. He remembered with profound 
indifference that he had not eaten anything yet since 
he had been left alone on the island. 

He spent the night open-eyed, and when the day 
broke he ate something with the same indifference. 
The brilliant “Son Decoud,” the spoiled darling of the 
family, the lover of Antonia and journalist of Sulaco, 
was not fit to grapple with himself single-handed. 
Solitude from mere outward condition of existence be- 
comes very swiftly a state of soul in which the affecta- 
tions of irony and scepticism have no place. It takes 
possession of the mind, and drives forth the thought 
into the exile of utter unbelief. After three days of 
waiting for the sight of some human face, Decoud 
caught himself entertaining a doubt of his own in- 
' dividuality. It had merged into the world of cloud 
and water, of natural forces and forms of nature. In 
our activity alone do we find the sustaining illusion 
of an independent existence as against the whole 
scheme of things of which we form a helpless part. 
Decoud lost all belief in the reality of his action past 
and to come. On the fifth day an immense melan- 
choly descended upon him palpably. He resolved 
not to give himself up to these people in Sulaco, who 


498 


NOSTROMO 


had beset him, unreal and terrible, like jibbering and ' 
obscene spectres. He saw himself struggling feebly in i 
their midst, and Antonia, gigantic and lovely like an • 
allegorical statue, looking on with scornful eyes at his i 
weakness. 

Not a living being, not a speck of distant sail, ap- ! 
peared within the range of his vision; and, as if to es- : 
cape from this solitude, he absorbed himself in his ; 
melancholy. The vague consciousness of a misdirected j 
life given up to impulses whose memory left a bitter ! 
taste in his mouth was the first moral sentiment of his ! 
manhood. But at the same time he felt no remorse. | 
What should he regret.^ He had recognized no other 
virtue than intelligence, and had erected passions into 
duties. Both his intelligence and his passion were 
swallowed up easily in this great unbroken solitude of 
waiting without faith. Sleeplessness had robbed his 
will of all energy, for he had not slept seven hours in 
the seven days. His sadness was the sadness of a scep- 
tical mind. He beheld the universe as a succession of 
incomprehensible images. Nostromo was dead. Every- 
thing had failed ignominiously. He no longer dared to 
think of Antonia. She had not survived. But if she 
survived he could not face her. And all exertion 
seemed senseless. 

On the tenth day, after a night spent without even 
dozing off once (it had occurred to him that Antonia 
could not possibly have ever loved a being so impal- 
pable as himself), the solitude appeared like a great 
void, and the silence of the gulf like a tense, thin cord ] 
to which he hung suspended by both hands, without , 
fear, without surprise, without any sort of emotion ^ 
whatever. Only towards the evening, in the compara- , 
tive relief of coolness, he began to wish that this cord j 
would snap. He imagined it snapping with a report as 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


499 


of a pistol — a sharp, full crack. And that would be 
the end of him. He contemplated that eventuality 
with pleasure, because he dreaded the sleepless nights 
in which the silence, remaining unbroken in the 
shape of a cord to which he hung with both hands, 
vibrated with senseless phrases, always the same but 
utterly incomprehensible, about Nostromo, Antonia, 
Barrios, and proclamations mingled into an ironical 
and senseless buzzing. In the daytime he could look 
at the silence like a still cord stretched to breaking- 
point, with his life, his vain life, suspended to it like a 
weight. 

“I wonder whether I would hear it snap before I 
fell,” he asked himself. 

The sun was two hours above the horizon when he got 
up, gaunt, dirty, white-faced, and looked at it with his 
red-rimmed eyes. His limbs obeyed him slowly, as if 
full of lead, yet without tremor; and the effect of that 
physical condition gave to his movements an unhesi- 
tating, deliberate dignity. He acted as if accomplish- 
ing some sort of rite. He descended into the gully; 
for the fascination of all that silver, with its potential 
power, survived alone outside of himself. He picked 
up the belt with the revolver, that was lying there, and 
buckled it round his waist. The cord of silence could 
never snap on the island. It must let him fall and 
sink into the sea, he thought. And sink ! He was look- 
ing at the loose earth covering the treasure. In the sea ! 
His aspect was that of a somnambulist. He lowered 
himself down on his knees slowly and went on grubbing 
with his fingers with industrious patience till he uneov- 
ered one of the boxes. Without a pause, as if doing 
some work done many times before, he slit it open and 
took four ingots, which he put in his poekets. He 
covered up the exposed box again and step by step 


500 NOSTROMO 

came out of the gully. The bushes closed after him 
with a swish. 

It was on the third day of his solitude that he had 
dragged the dinghy near the water with an idea of row- 
ing away somewhere, but had desisted partly at the 
whisper of lingering hope that Nostromo would return, 
partly from conviction of utter uselessness of all effort. 
Now she wanted only a slight shove to be set afloat. 
He had eaten a little every day after the first, and 
had some muscular strength left yet. Taking up the 
oars slowly, he pulled away from the cliff of the Great 
Isabel, that stood behind him warm with sunshine, 
as if with the heat of life, bathed in a rich light from 
head to foot as if in a radiance of hope and joy. He 
pulled straight towards the setting sun. When the gulf 
had grown dark, he ceased rowing and flung the sculls 
in. The hollow clatter they made in falling was the 
loudest noise he had ever heard in his life. It was a 
revelation. It seemed to recall him from far away. 
Actually the thought, “Perhaps I may sleep to-night,” 
passed through his mind. But he did not believe it. 
He believed in nothing; and he remained sitting on the 
thwart. 

The dawn from behind the mountains put a gleam 
into his unwinking eyes. After a clear daybreak the 
sun appeared splendidly above the peaks of the range. 
The great gulf burst into a glitter all around the boat; 
and in this glory of merciless solitude the silence ap- 
peared again before him, stretched taut like a dark, 
thin string. 

His eyes looked at it while, without haste, he shifted 
his seat from the thwart to the gunwale. They looked 
at it fixedly, while his hand, feeling about his waist, 
unbuttoned the flap of the leather case, drew the re- 
volver, cocked it, brought it forward pointing at his 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


501 


; breast, pulled the trigger, and, with convulsive force, 
sent the still-smoking weapon hurtling through the air. 
His eyes looked at it while he fell forward and hung 
with his breast on the gunwale and the fingers of his 

right hand hooked under the thwart. They looked 

“It is done,’’ he stammered out, in a sudden flow of 
blood. His last thought was: “I wonder how that 
Capataz died.” The stiffness of the fingers relaxed, 
and the lover of Antonia Avellanos rolled overboard 
' without having heard the cord of silence snap in the 
solitude of the Placid ^Gulf, whose glittering surface 
remained untroubled by the fall of his body. 

A victim of the disillusioned weariness which is the 
retribution meted out to intellectual audacity, the bril- 
liant Don Martin Decoud, weighted by the bars of San 
Tome silver, disappeared without a trace, swallowed 
up in the immense indifference of things. His sleep- 
less, crouching figure was gone from the side of the 
San Tome silver; and for a time the spirits of good and 
evil that hover near every concealed treasure of the 
earth might have thought that this one had been for- 
gotten by all mankind. Then, after a few days, an- 
other form appeared striding away from the setting 
I sun to sit motionless and awake in the narrow black 
gully all through the night, in nearly the same pose, in 
1 the same place ip which had sat that other sleepless man 
who had gone away for ever so quietly in a small boat, 
I about the time of sunset. And the spirits of good and 
i evil that hover about a forbidden treasure understood 
' well that the silver of San Tome was provided now with 
j a faithful and lifelong slave. 

The magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, victim of 
li the disenchanted vanity which is the reward of auda- 
i cious action, sat in the weary pose of a hunted outcast 
through a night of sleeplessness as tormenting as any 


50 ^ 


NOSTROMO 


known to Decoud, his companion in the most desperate 
affair of his life. And he wondered how Decoud had 
died. But he knew the part he had played himself. 
First a woman, then a man, abandoned each in their 
last extremity, for the sake of this accursed treasure. 
It was paid for by a soul lost and by a vanished life. 
The blank stillness of awe was succeeded by a gust of 
immense pride. There was no one in the world but 
Gian’ Battista Fidanza, Capataz de Cargadores, the 
incorruptible and faithful Nostromo, to pay such a 
price. 

He had made up his mind that nothing should be 
allowed now to rob him of his bargain. Nothing. De- 
coud had died. But how.^ That he was dead he had 
not a shadow of a doubt. But four ingots? . . . 

What for? Did he mean to come for more — some 
other time? 

The treasure was putting forth its latent power. 
It troubled the clear mind of the man who had paid 
the price. He was sure that Decoud was dead. The 
island seemed full of that whisper. Dead? Gone! 
And he caught himself listening for the swish of bushes 
and the splash of the footfalls in the bed of the brook. 
Dead! The talker, the novio of Dona Antonia! 

“Ha!” he murmured, with his head on his knees, 
under the livid clouded dawn breaking over the liber- 
ated Sulaco and upon the gulf as gray as ashes. “It 
is to her that he will fly. To her that he will fly!” 

And four ingots! Did he take them in revenge, to 
cast a spell, like the angry woman who had prophesied 
remorse and failure, and yet had laid upon him the 
task of saving the children? , Well, he had saved the 
children. He had defeated the spell of poverty and 
starvation. He had done it all alone — or perhaps 
helped by the devil. Who cared? He had done it. 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


503 


betrayed as he was, and saving by the same stroke the 
San Tome mine, which appeared to him hateful and 
immense, lording it by its vast wealth over the valour, 
the toil, the fidelity of the poor, over war and peace, 
over the labours of the town, the sea, and the Campo. 

, The sun lit up the sky behind the peaks of the Cor- 
1 dillera. The Capataz looked down for a time upon the 
I fall of loose earth, stones, and smashed bushes, conceal- 
I ing the hiding-place of the silver. 

‘T must grow rich very slowly,” he meditated, aloud. 


CHAPTER ELEVEN 


SuLACO outstripped Nostromo’s prudence, growing 
rich swiftly on the hidden treasures of the earth, hovered 
over by the anxious spirits of good and evil, torn out 
by the labouring hands of the people. It was like a 
second youth, like a new life, full of promise, of unrest, 
of toil, scattering lavishly its wealth to the four corners 
of an excited world. Material changes swept along 
in the train of material interests. And other changes 
more subtle, outwardly unmarked, affected the minds 
and hearts of the workers. Captain Mitchell had gone 
home to live on his savings invested in the San Tome 
mine; and Dr. Monygham had grown older, with his 
head steel-grey and the unchanged expression of his 
face, living on the inexhaustible treasure of his devo- 
tion drawn upon in the secret of his heart like a store 
of unlawful wealth. 

The Inspector-General of State Hospitals (whose 
maintenance is a charge upon the Gould Concession), 
Official Adviser on Sanitation to the Municipality, 
Chief Medical Officer of the San Tome Consolidated 
Mines (whose territory, containing gold, silver, copper, 
lead, cobalt, extends for miles along the foot-hills of 
the Cordillera), had felt poverty-stricken, miserable, 
and starved during the prolonged, second visit the 
Goulds paid to Europe and the United States of Amer- 
ica. Intimate of the casa, proved friend, a bachelor 
without ties and without establishment (except of 
the professional sort), he had been asked to take up his 
quarters in the Gould house. In the eleven months 
504 


505 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 

of their absence the familiar rooms, recalling at every 
: glance the woman to whom he had given all his loyalty, 
had grown intolerable. As the day approached for 
the arrival of the mail boat Hermes (the latest addition 
to the O. S. N. Co/s splendid fleet), the doctor hobbled 
about more vivaciously, snapped more sardonically 
' at simple and gentle out of sheer nervousness. 

He packed up his modest trunk with speed, with 
fury, with enthusiasm, and saw it carried out past the 
old porter at the gate of the Casa Gould with delight, 
with intoxication; then, as the hour approached, sitting 
f alone in the great landau behind the white mules, a 
little sideways, his drawn-in face positively venomous 
with the effort of self-control, and holding a pair of new 
gloves in his left hand, he drove to the harbour. 

His heart dilated within him so, when he saw thS 
j Goulds on the deck of the Hermes, that his greetings 
were reduced to a casual mutter. Driving back to 
town, all three were silent. And in the patio the doctor, 
in a more natural manner, said — 

“I’ll leave you now to yourselves. I’ll call to-morrow 
; if I may.^” 

“Come to lunch, dear Dr. Monygham, and come 
‘ early,” said Mrs. Gould, in her travelling dress and her 
j veil down, turning .to look at him at the foot of the 
stairs; while at the top of the flight the Madonna, in 
I blue robes and the Child on her arm, seemed to welcome 
her with an aspect of pitying tenderness, 
j “Don’t expect to And me at home,” Charles Gould 
I warned him. “I’ll be off early to the mine.” 

After lunch. Dona Emilia and the senor doctor came 
slowly through the inner gateway of the patio. The 
large gardens of the Casa Gould, surrounded by high 
walls, and the red-tile slopes of neighbouring roofs, lay 
open before them, with masses of shade under the trees 


50(5 


NOSTROMO 


and level surfaces of sunlight upon the lawns. A triple 
row of old orange trees surrounded the whole. Bare- 
footed, brown gardeners, in snowy white shirts and wide 
calzoneras, dotted the grounds, squatting over flower- 
beds, passing between the trees, dragging slender india- 
rubber tubes across the gravel of the paths; and the 
fine jets of water crossed each other in graceful curves, 
sparkling in the sunshine with a slight pattering noise 
upon the bushes, and an effect of showered diamonds 
upon the grass. 

Dona Emilia, holding up the train of a clear dress, 
walked by the side of Dr. Monygham, in a longish 
black coat and severe black bow on an immaculate shirt- 
front. Under a shady clump of trees, where stood scat- 
tered little tables and wicker easy-chairs, Mrs. Gould 
l^at down in a low and ample seat. 

“Don’t go yet,” she said to Dr. Monygham, who was 
unable to tear himself away from the spot. His chin 
nestling within the points of his collar, he devoured her 
stealthily with his eyes, which, luckily, were round and 
hard like clouded marbles, and incapable of disclosing 
his sentiments. His pitying emotion at the marks of 
time upon the face of that woman, the air of frailty 
and weary fatigue that had settled upon the eyes and 
temples of the “Never-tired Senora” (as Don Pepe 
years ago used to call her with admiration), touched 
him almost to tears. “Don’t go yet. To-day is all 
my own,” Mrs. Gould urged, gently. “ We are not back 
yet officially. No one will come. It’s only to-morrow 
that the windows of the Casa Gould are to be lit up for 
a reception.” 

The doctor dropped into a chair. 

“Giving a tertulia.?” he said, with a detached air. 

“A simple greeting for all the kind friends who care to 
come.” 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


507 


‘‘And only to-morrow?” 

“Yes. Charles would be tired out after a day at the 

mine, and so It would be good to have him to 

myself for one evening on our return to this house I love. 
It has seen all my life.” 

“Ah, yes!” snarled the doctor, suddenly. “Women 
count time from the marriage feast. Didn’t you live a 
i little before?” 

' “Yes; but what is there to remember? There were no 
cares.” 

Mrs. Gould sighed. And as two friends, after a long 
separation, will revert to the most agitated period of 
their lives, they began to talk of the Sulaco Revolution. 
( It seemed strange to Mrs. Gould that people who had 
II taken part in it seemed to forget its memory and its 
lesson. 

“And yet,” struck in the doctor, “we who played our 
part in it had our reward. Don Pepe, though super- 
annuated, still can sit a horse. Barrios is drinking him- 
self to death in jovial company away somewhere on his 
fundacion beyond the Bolson de Tonoro. And the heroic 
Father Roman — I imagine the old padre blowing up 
systematically the San Tome mine, uttering a pious 
exclamation at every bang, and taking handfuls of snuff 
between the explosions^ — the heroic Padre Roman says 
that he is not afraid of the harm Holroyd’s missionaries 
can do to his flock, as long as he is alive.” 

Mrs. Gould shuddered a little at the allusion to the 
destruction that had come so near to the San Tome mine. 

“Ah, but you, dear friend?” 

“I did the work I was fit for.” 

“You faced the most cruel dangers of all. Something 
more than death.” 

“No, Mrs. Gould! Only death — by hanging. And 
I am rewarded beyond my deserts.” 


508 NOSTROMO 

Noticing* Mrs. Gould’s gaze fixed upon him, he drop- 
ped his eyes. 

“I’ve made my career — as you see,” said the In- 
spector-General of State Hospitals, taking up lightly 
the lapels of his superfine black coat. The doctor’s 
self-respect marked inwardly by the almost complete 
disappearance from his dreams of Father Beron, ap- 
peared visibly in what, by contrast with former care- 
lessness, seemed an immoderate cult of personal appear- 
ance. Carried out within severe limits of form and 
colour, and in perpetual freshness, this change of ap- 
parel gave to Dr. Monygham an air at the same time 
professional and festive; while his gait and the un- 
changed crabbed character of his face acquired from it a 
startling force of incongruity. 

“Yes,” he went on. “We all had our rewards — the 
engineer-in-chief. Captain Mitchell ” 

“We saw him,” interrupted Mrs. Gould, in her 
charming voice. “The poor dear man came up from 
the country on purpose to call on us in our hotel in 
London. He comported himself with great dignity, 
but I fancy he regrets Sulaco. He rambled feebly 
about ‘historical events’ till I felt I could have a cry.” 

“H’m,” grunted the doctor; “getting old, I suppose. 
Even Nostromo is getting older— though he is not 
changed. And, speaking of that fellow, I wanted to 
tell you something ” 

For some time the house had been full of murmurs, of 
agitation. Suddenly the two gardeners, busy with rose 
trees at the side of the garden arch, fell upon their knees 
with bowed heads on the passage of Antonia Avellanos, 
who appeared walking beside her uncle. 

Invested with the red hat after a short visit to Rome, 
where he had been invited by the Propaganda, Father 
Corbelan, missionary to the wild Indians, conspirator. 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


509 


friend and patron of Hernandez the robber, advanced 
with big, slow strides, gaunt and leaning forward, with 
his powerful hands clasped behind his back. The first 
Cardinal-Archbishop of Sulaco had preserved his fa- 
natical and morose air ; the aspect of a chaplain of bandits. 
It was believed that his unexpected elevation to the 
purple was a counter-move to the Protestant invasion 
of Sulaco organized by the Holroyd Missionary Fund. 
Antonia, the beauty of her face as if a little blurred, 
her figure slightly fuller, advanced with her light walk 
and her high serenity, smiling from a distance at Mrs. 
Gould. She had brought her uncle over to see dear 
Emilia, without ceremony, just for a moment before the 
siesta. 

When all were seated again. Dr. Monygham, who had 
come to dislike heartily everybody who approached 
Mrs. Gould with any intimacy, kept aside, pretending 
to be lost in profound meditation. A louder phrase 
of Antonia made him lift his head. 

“How can we abandon, groaning under oppression, 
those who have been our countrymen only a few years 
ago, who are our countrymen now.^” Miss Avellanos 
was saying. “How can we remain blind, and deaf 
without pity to the cruel wrongs suffered by our 
brothers.^ There is a remedy.” 

“Annex the rest of Costaguana to the order and pros- 
perity of Sulaco,” snapped the doctor. “There is no 
other remedy.” 

“I am convinced, senor doctor,” Antonia said, with 
the earnest calm of invincible resolution, “that this 
was from the first poor Martin’s intention.” 

“Yes, but the material interests will not let you 
jeopardize their development for a mere idea of pity 
and justice,” the doctor muttered, grumpily. “And 
it is just as well perhaps.” 


510 NOSTROMO 

The Cardinal-Archbishop straightened up his gaunt, 
bony frame. 

“We have worked for them; we have made them, 
these material interests of the foreigners,” the last of 
the Corbelans uttered in a deep, denunciatory tone. 

“And without them you are nothing,” cried the doc- 
tor from the distance. “They will not let you.” 

“Let them beware, then, lest the people, prevented 
from their aspirations, should rise and claim their share 
of the wealth and their share of the power,” the popular 
Cardinal-Archbishop of Sulaco declared, significantly, 
menacingly. 

A silence ensued, during which his Eminence stared, 
frowning at the ground, and Antonia, graceful and rigid 
in her chair, breathed calmly in the strength of her con- 
victions. Then the conversation took a social turn, 
touching on the visit of the Goulds to Europe. The 
Cardinal-Archbishop, when in Rome, had suffered from 
neuralgia in the head all the time. It was the climate 
— the bad air. 

When uncle and niece had gone away, with the ser- 
vants again falling on their knees, and the old porter, 
who had known Henry Gould, almost totally blind 
and impotent now, creeping up to kiss his Eminence’s 
extended hand. Dr. Monygham, looking after them, 
pronounced the one word — 

“Incorrigible!” 

Mrs. Gould, with a look upwards, dropped wearily 
on her lap her white hands flashing with the gold and 
stones of many rings. 

“Conspiring. Yes!” said the doctor. “The last of 
the Avellanos and the last of the Corbelans are con- 
spiring with the refugees from Sta. Marta that flock 
here alter every revolution. The Cafe Lambroso at 
the corner of the Plaza is full of them; you can hear 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


511 


their chatter across the street like the noise of a parrot- 
house. They are conspiring for the invasion of Costa- 
guana. And do you know where they go for strength, 
for the necessary force To the secret societies amongst 
immigrants and natives, where Nostromo — I should 
say Captain Fidanza — is the great man. What gives 
him that position Who can say.^ Genius He has 
genius. He is greater with the populace than ever 
he was before. It was as if he had some secret power; 
some mysterious means to keep up his influence. He 
holds conferences with the Archbishop, as in those old 
days which you and I remember. Barrios is useless. 
But for a military head they have the pious Hernandez. 
And they may raise the country with the new cry of 
the wealth for the people.” 

“Will there be never any peace.^ Will there be no 
rest.f^” Mrs. Gould whispered. “I thought that 


“No!” interrupted the doctor. “There is no peace 
and no rest in the development of material interests. 
They have their law, and their justice. But it is founded 
on expediency, and is inhuman; it is without rectitude, 
without the continuity and the force that can be found 
only in a moral principle. Mrs. Gould, the time ap- 
proaches when all that the Gould Concession stands 
for shall weigh as heavily upon the people as the bar- 
barism, cruelty, and misrule of a few years back.” 

“How can you say that. Dr. Monygham.f^” she cried 
out, as if hurt in the most sensitive place of her soul. 

“I can say what is true,” the doctor insisted, obsti- 
nately. “It’ll weigh as heavily, and provoke resent- 
ment, bloodshed, and vengeance, because the men have 
grown different. Do you think that now the mine 
would march upon the town to save their Senor Ad- 
ministrador.? Do you think that .^” 


512 


NOSTROMO 


She pressed the backs of her entwined hands on her 
eyes and murmured hopelessly — 

“Is it this we have worked for, then?” 

The doctor lowered his head. He could follow her 
silent thought. Was it for this that her life had been 
robbed of all the intimate felicities of daily affection 
which her tenderness needed as the human body needs 
air to breathe? And the doctor, indignant with Charles 
Gould’s blindness, hastened to change the conversation. 

“It is about Nostromo that I wanted to talk to you. 
Ah! that fellow has some continuity and force. Noth- 
ing will put an end to him. But never mind that. 
There’s something inexplicable going on — or perhaps 
only too easy to explain. You know, Linda is prac- 
tically the lighthouse keeper of the Great Isabel light. 
The Garibaldino is too old now. His part is to clean 
the lamps and to cook in the house; but he can’t get 
up the stairs any longer. The black-eyed Linda sleeps 
all day and watches the light all night. Not all day, 
though. She is up towards five in the afternoon, when 
our Nostromo, whenever he is in harbour with his 
schooner, comes out on his courting visit, pulling in a 
small boat.” 

“Aren’t they married yet?” Mrs. Gould asked. 
“The mother wished it, as far as I can understand, 
while Linda was yet quite a child. When I had the 
girls with me for a year or so during the War of Separa- 
tion, that extraordinary Linda used to declare quite 
simply that she was going to be Gian’ Battista’s wife.” 

“They are not married yet,” said the doctor, curtly. 
“I have looked after them a little.” 

“Thank you, dear Dr. Monygham,” said Mrs. 
Gould; and under the shade of the big trees her little, 
even teeth gleamed in a youthful smile of gentle malice. 
“People don’t know how really good you are. You 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


513 


will not let them know, as if on purpose to annoy me, 
who have put my faith in your good heart long ago.” 

The doctor, with a lifting up of his upper lip, as 
though he were longing to bite, bowed stiffly in his chair. 
With the utter absorption of a man to whom love 
comes late, not as the most splendid of illusions, but 
like an enlightening and priceless misfortune, the sight 
of that woman (of whom he had been deprived for 
nearly a year) suggested ideas of adoration, of kissing 
the hem of her robe. And this excess of feeling trans- 
lated itself naturally into an augmented grimness of 
speech. 

“I am afraid of being overwhelmed by too much 
gratitude. However, these people interest me. I 
went out several times to the Great Isabel light to look 
after old Giorgio.” 

He did not tell Mrs. Gould that it was because he 
found there, in her absence, the relief of an atmosphere 
of congenial sentiment in old Giorgio’s austere admira- 
tion for the ‘‘English signora — the benefactress”; 
in black-eyed Linda’s voluble, torrential, passionate 
affection for “our Dona Emilia — that angel”; in the 
white-throated, fair Giselle’s adoring upward turn of 
the eyes, which then glided towards him with a sidelong, 
half-arch, half-candid glance, which made the doctor 
exclaim to himself mentally, “If I weren’t what I am, 
old and ugly, I would think the minx is making eyes 
at me. And perhaps she is. I dare say she would 
make eyes at anybody.” Dr. Monygham said nothing 
of this to Mrs. Gould, the providence of the Viola 
family, but reverted to what he called “our great 
Nostromo.” 

“What I wanted to tell you is this: Our great Nos- 
tromo did not take much notice of the old man and 
the children for some years. It’s true, too, that he 


514 


NOSTROMO 


was away on his coasting voyages certainly ten months 
out of the twelve. He was making his fortune, as he 
told Captain Mitchell once. He seems to have done 
uncommonly well. It was only to be expected. He is 
a man full of resource, full of confidence in himself, 
ready to take chances and risks of every sort. I re- 
member being in Mitchell’s office one day, when he 
came in with that calm, grave air he always carries 
everywhere. He had been away trading in the Gulf of 
California, he said, looking straight past us at the wall, 
as his manner is, and was glad to see on his return 
that a lighthouse was being built on the cliff of the 
Great Isabel. Very glad, he repeated. Mitchell ex- 
plained that it was the O. S. N. Co. who was building 
it, for the convenience of the mail service, on his own 
advice. Captain Fidanza was good enough to say that 
it was excellent advice. I remember him twisting up 
his moustaches and looking all round the cornice of the 
room before he proposed that old Giorgio should be 
made the keeper of that light .” 

‘H heard of this. I was consulted at the time,” Mrs. 
Gould said. “I doubted whether it would be good for 
these girls to be shut up on that island as if in a prison.” 

“The proposal fell in with the old Garibaldino’s 
humour. As to Linda, any place was lovely and delight- 
ful enough for her as long as it was Nostromo’s sugges- 
tion. She could wait for her Gian’ Battista’s good 
pleasure there as well as anywhere else. My opinion 
is that she was always in love with that incorruptible 
Capataz. Moreover, both father and sister were 
anxious to get Giselle away from the attentions of a 
certain Ramirez.” 

“Ah!” said Mrs. Gould, interested. “Ramirez.^^ 
What sort of man is that.?” 

“Just a mozo of the town. His father was a Car- 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


515 


gador. As a lanky boy he ran about the wharf in rags, 
till Nostromo took him up and made a man of him. 
When he got a little older, he put him into a lighter 
and very soon gave him charge of the No. 3 boat — the 
boat which took the silver away, Mrs. Gould. Nos- 
tromo selected that lighter for the work because she was 
the best sailing and the strongest boat of all the Com- 
pany’s fleet. Young Ramirez was one of the five Car- 
gadores entrusted with the removal of the treasure 
from the Custom House on that famous night. As the 
boat he had charge of was sunk, Nostromo, on leaving 
the Company’s service, recommended him to Captain 
Mitchell for his successor. He had trained him in the 
routine of work perfectly, and thus Mr. Ramirez, from 
a starving waif, becomes a man and the Capataz of the 
Sulaco Cargadores.” 

“Thanks to Nostromo,” said Mrs. Gould, with warm 
approval. 

“Thanks to Nostromo,” repeated Dr. Monygham. 
“Upon my word, the fellow’s power frightens me when 
I think of it. That our poor old Mitchell was only too 
glad to appoint somebody trained to the work, who 
saved him trouble, is not surprising. What is wonder- 
ful is the fact that the Sulaco Cargadores accepted 
Ramirez for their chief, simply because such was Nos- 
tromo’s good pleasure. Of course, he is not a second 
Nostromo, as he fondly imagined he would be; but still, 
the position was brilliant enough. It emboldened him 
to make up to Giselle Viola, who, you know, is the 
recognized beauty of the town. The old Garibaldino, 
however, took a violent dislike to him. I don’t know 
why. Perhaps because he was not a model of perfec- 
tion like his Gian’ Battista, the incarnation of the 
courage, the fidelity, the honour of The people.’ Signor 
Viola does not think much of Sulaco natives. Both of 


516 


NOSTROMO 


them, the old Spartan and that white-faced Linda, 
with her red mouth and coal-black eyes, were looking 
rather fiercely after the fair one. Ramirez was warned 
off. Father Viola, I am told, threatened him with his 
gun once.’’ 

“But what of Giselle herself.^” asked Mrs. Gould. 

“She’s a bit of a flirt, I believe,” said the doctor. “I 
don’t think she cared much one way or another. Of 
course she likes men’s attentions. Ramirez was not 
the only one, let me tell you, Mrs. Gould. There was 
one engineer, at least, on the railway staff who got 
warned off with a gun, too. Old Viola does not allow 
any trifling with his honour. He has grown uneasy 
and suspicious since his wife died. He was very pleased 
to remove his youngest girl away from the town. But 
look what happens, Mrs. Gould. Ramirez, the honest, 
lovelorn swain, is forbidden the island. Very well. 
He respects the prohibition, but naturally turns his 
eyes frequently towards the Great Isabel. It seems as 
though he had been in the habit of gazing late at night 
upon the light. And during these sentimental vigils 
he discovers that Nostromo, Captain Fidanza that is, 
returns very late from his visits to the Violas. As 
late as midnight at times.” 

The doctor paused and stared meaningly at Mrs. 
Gould. 

“Yes. But I don’t understand,” she began, looking 
puzzled. 

“Now comes the strange part,” went on Dr. Monyg- 
ham. “Viola, who is king on his island, will allow no 
visitor on it after dark. Even Captain Fidanza has 
got to leave after sunset, when Linda has gone up to 
tend the light. And Nostromo goes away obediently. 
But what happens afterwards What does he do in the 
gulf between half-past six and midnight He has been 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


517 


seen more than once at that late hour pulling quietly 
into the harbour. Ramirez is devoured by jealousy. 
He dared not approach old Viola; but he plucked up 
courage to rail Linda about it on Sunday morning as she 
came on the mainland to hear Mass and visit her 
mother’s grave. There was* a scene on the wharf, which, 
as a matter of fact, I witnessed. It was early morning. 
He must have been waiting for her on purpose. I was 
there by the merest chance, having been called to an 
urgent consultation by the doctor of the German gun- 
boat in the harbour. She poured wrath, scorn, and 
flame upon Ramirez, who seemed out of his mind. It 
was a strange sight, Mrs. Gould: the long jetty, with 
this raving Cargador in his crimson sash and the girl 
all in black, at the end; the early Sunday morning 
quiet of the harbour in the shade of the mountains; 
nothing but a canoe or two moving between the ships 
at anchor, and the German gunboat’s gig coming to 
take me off. Linda passed me within a foot. I noticed 
her wild eyes. I called out to her. She never heard 
me. She never saw. me. But I looked at her face. It 
was awful in its anger and wretchedness.” 

Mrs. Gould sat up, opening her eyes very wide. 

“What do you mean. Dr. Monygham.^ Do you 
mean to say that you suspect the younger sister.? ” 

'‘Quien sahe! Who can tell.?” said the doctor, 
shrugging his shoulders like a born Costaguanero. 
“Ramirez came up to me on the wharf. He reeled — he 
looked insane. He took his head into his hands. He 
had to talk to someone — simply had to. Of course 
for all his mad state he recognized me. People know 
me well here. I have lived too long amongst them to 
be anything else but the evil-eyed doctor, who can cure 
all the ills of the flesh, and bring bad luck by a glance. 
He came up to me. He tried to be calm. He tried 


518 


NOSTROMO 


to make it out that he wanted merely to warn me 
against Nostromo. It seems that Captain Fidanza at 
some secret meeting or other had mentioned me as the 
worst despiser of all the poor — of the people. It’s very 
possible. He honours me with his undying dislike. 
And a word from the great Fidanza may be quite enough 
to send some fool’s knife into my back. The Sanitary 
Commission I preside over is not in favour with the 
poptilace. ‘Beware of him, senor doctor. Destroy 
him, senor doctor,’ Ramirez hissed right into my face. 
And then he broke out. ‘That man,’ he spluttered, 
‘has cast a spell upon both these girls.’ As to himself, 
he had said too much. He must run away now — run 
away and hide somewhere. He moaned tenderly about 
Giselle and then, called her names that cannot be re- 
peated. If he thought she could be made to love him 
by any means, he would carry her off from the island. 
Off into the woods. But it was no good. . . . He 

strode away, flourishing his arms above his head. Then 
I noticed an old negro, who had been sitting behind a 
pile of cases, fishing from the wharf. He wound up his 
lines and slunk away at once. But he must have heard 
something, and must have talked, too, because some of 
the old Garibaldino’s railway friends, I suppose, warned 
him against Ramirez. At any rate, the father had been 
warned. But Ramirez has disappeared from the town.” 

“I feel I have a duty towards these girls,” said Mrs. 
Gould, uneasily. “Is Nostromo in Sulaco now.^” 

“He is, since last Sunday.” 

“He ought to be spoken to — at once.” 

“Who will dare speak to him.^ Even the love-mad 
Ramirez runs away from the mere shadow of Captain 
Fidanza.” 

“I can. I *will,” Mrs. Gould declared. “A word 
will be enough for a man like Nostromo.” 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


519 


The doctor smiled sourly. 

“He must end this situation which lends itself to 

I can’t believe it of that child,” pursued Mrs. Gould. 

“He’s very attractive,” muttered the doctor, 
gloomily. 

“He’ll see it, I am sure. He must put an end to all 
this by marrying Linda at once,” pronounced the first 
lady of Sulaco with immense decision. 

Through the garden gate emerged Basilio, grown* fat 
and sleek, with an elderly hairless face, wrinkles at the 
corners of his eyes, and his jet-black, coarse hair plas- 
tered down smoothly. Stooping carefully behind an 
ornamental clump of bushes, he put down with pre- 
caution a small child he had been carrying on his shoul- 
der — his own and Leonarda’s last born. The pouting, 
spoiled Camerista and the head mozo of the Casa Gould 
had been married for some years now. 

hie remained squatting on his heels for a time, gazing 
fondly at his offspring, which returned his stare with 
imperturbable gravity^ then, solemn and respectable, 
walked down the path. 

“What is it, Basilio asked Mrs. Gould. 

“A telephone came through from the oflSce of the 
mine. The master remains to sleep at the mountain 
to-night.” 

Dr. Monygham had got up and stood looking away. 
A profound silence reigned for a time under the shade 
of the biggest trees in the lovely gardens of the Casa 
Gould. 

“Very well, Basilio,” said Mrs. Gould. She watched 
him walk away along the path, step aside behind the 
flowering bush, and reappear with the child seated on 
his shoulder. He passed through the gateway between 
the garden and the patio with measured steps, careful 
of his light burden. 


520 


NOSTROMO 


The doctor, with his back to Mrs. Gould, contem- 
plated a flower-bed away in the sunshine. People 
believed him scornful and soured. The truth of his 
nature consisted in his capacity for passion and in the 
sensitiveness of his temperament. What he lacked 
was the polished callousness of men of the world, the 
callousness from which springs an easy tolerance for 
oneself and others; the tolerance wide as poles asunder 
from true sympathy and human compassion. This 
want of callousness accounted for his sardonic turn 
of mind and his biting speeches. 

In profound silence, and glaring viciously at the bril- 
liant flower-bed. Dr. Monygham poured mental im- 
precations on Charles Gould’s head. Behind him the 
immobility of Mrs. Gould added to the grace of her 
seated figure the charm of art, of an attitude caught 
and interpreted for ever. Turning abruptly, the doctor 
took his leave. 

Mrs. Gould leaned back in the shade of the big trees 
planted in a circle. She leaned back with her eyes 
closed and her white hands lying idle on the arms of 
her seat. The half-light under the thick mass of leaves 
brought out the youthful prettiness of her face; made 
the clear, light fabrics and white lace of her dress appear 
luminous. Small and dainty, as if radiating a light 
of her own in the deep shade of the interlaced boughs, 
she resembled a good fairy, weary with a long career 
of well-doing, touched by the withering suspicion of 
the uselessness of her labours, the powerlessness of her 
magic. 

Had anybody asked her of what she was thinking, 
alon)B in the garden of the Casa, with her husband at the 
mine and the house closed to the street like an empty 
dwelling, her frankness would have had to evade the 
question. It had come into her mind that for life to 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


521 


be large and full, it must contain the care of the past 
and of the future in every passing moment of the pres- 
ent. Our daily work must be done to the glory of the 
dead, and for the good of those who come after. She 
thought that, and sighed without opening her eyes — 
without moving at all. Mrs. Gould’s face became set and 
rigid for a second, as if to receive, without flinching, a 
great wave of loneliness that swept over her head. And 
it came into her mind, too, that no one would ever ask 
her with solicitude what she was thinking of. No one. 
No one, but perhaps the man who had just gone away. 
No; no one who could be answered with careless sin- 
cerity in the ideal perfection of confidence. 

The word “incorrigible” — a word lately pronounced 
by Dr. Monygham — floated into her still and sad im- 
mobility. Incorrigible in his devotion to the great 
silver mine was the Senor Administrador ! Incorrigible 
in his hard, determined service of the material interests 
to which he had pinned his faith in the triumph of order 
and justice. Poor boy! She had a clear vision of the 
. grey hairs on his temples. He was perfect — perfect. 

What more could she have expected.^ It was a colos- 
I sal and lasting success; and love was only a short mo- 
I ment of forgetfulness, a short intoxication, whose de- 
I light one remembered with a sense of sadness, as if it 
had been a deep grief lived through. There was some- 
thing inherent in the necessities of successful action 
, which carried with it the moral degradation of the idea, 
j She saw the San Tome mountain hanging over the 
! Campo, over the whole land, feared, hated, wealthy; 
I more soulless than any tyrant, more pitiless and auto- 
cratic than the worst Government; ready to crush 
innumerable lives in the expansion of its greatness. 
He did not see it. He could not see it. It was not his 
fault. He was perfect, perfect; but she would never 


522 


NOSTROMO 


have him to herself. Never; not for one short hour 
altogether to herself in this old Spanish house she loved 
so well! Incorrigible, the last of the Corbelans, the 
last of the Avellanos, the doctor had said; but she saw 
clearly the San Tome mine possessing, consuming, 
burning up the life of the last of the.Costaguana Goulds; 
mastering the energetic spirit of the son as it had mas- 
tered the lamentable weakness of the father. A terrible 
success for the last of the Goulds. The last! She had 

hoped for a long, long time, that perhaps But no ! 

There were to be no more. An immense desolation, the 
dread of her own continued life, descended upon the first 
lady of Sulaco. With a prophetic vision she saw herself 
surviving alone the degradation of her young ideal of 
life, of love, of work — all alone in the Treasure House 
of the World. The profound, blind, suffering expression 
of a painful dream settled on her face with its closed 
eyes. In the indistinct voice of an unlucky sleeper, 
lying passive in the grip of a merciless nightmare, she 
stammered out aimlessly the words — 

“Material interest.” 


CHAPTER TWELVE 


Nostromo had been growing rich very slowly. It was 
an effect of his prudence. He could command himself 
even when thrown off his balance. And to become the 
slave of a treasure with full self-knowledge is an occur- 
rence rare and mentally disturbing. But it was also 
in a great part because of the difficulty of converting 
it into a form in which it could become available. The 
mere act of getting it away from the island piecemeal, 
little by little, was surrounded by difficulties, by the 
dangers of imminent detection. He had to visit the 
Great Isabel in secret, between his voyages along the 
coast, which were the ostensible source of his fortune. 
The crew of his own schooner were to be feared as if 
they had been spies upon their dreaded captain. He 
did not dare stay too long in port. When his coaster 
was unloaded, he hurried away on another trip, for he 
feared arousing suspicion even by a day’s delay. 
Sometimes during a week’s stay, or more, he could only 
manage one visit to the treasure. And that was all. A 
couple of ingots. He suffered through his fears as much 
as through his prudence. To do things by stealth hu- 
miliated him. And he suffered most from the concen- 
tration of his thought upon the treasure. 

A transgression, a crime entering a man’s existence, 
eats it up like a malignant growth, consumes it like a 
fever. Nostromo had lost his peace; the genuineness of 
all his qualities was destroyed. He felt it himself, 
and often cursed the silver of San Tome. His courage, 
his magnificence, his leisure, his work, everything was 
523 


524 


NOSTROMO 


as before, only everything was a sham. But the treas- 
ure was real. He clung to it with a more tenacious, 
mental grip. But he hated the feel of the ingots. 
Sometimes, after putting away a couple of them in his 
cabin — the fruit of a secret night expedition to the 
Great Isabel — ^he would look fixedly at his fingers, as if 
surprised they had left no stain on his skin. 

He had found means of disposing of the silver bars in 
distant ports. The necessity to go far afield made his 
coasting voyages long, and caused his visits to the Viola 
household to be rare and far between. He was fated 
to have his wife from there. He had said so once to 
Giorgio himself. But the Garibaldino had put the 
subject aside with a majestic wave of his hand, clutch- 
ing a smouldering black briar-root pipe. There was 
plenty of time; he was not the man to force his girls 
upon anybody. 

As time went on, Nostromo discovered his preference 
for the younger of the two. They had some profound 
similarities of nature, which must exist for complete 
confidence and understanding, no matter what outward 
differences of temperament there may be to exercise 
their own fascination of contrast. His wife would 
have to know his secret or else life would be impossible. 
He was attracted by Giselle, with her candid gaze and 
white throat, pliable, silent, fond of excitement under 
her quiet indolence; whereas Linda, with her intense, 
passionately pale face, energetic, all fire and words, 
touched with gloom and scorn, a chip of the old block, 
true daughter of the austere republican, but with Te- 
resa’s voice, inspired him with a deep-seated mistrust. 
Moreover, the poor girl could not conceal her love for 
Gian’ Battista. He could see it would be violent, ex- 
acting, suspicious, uncompromising — like her soul. 
Giselle, by her fair but warm beauty, by the surface 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


525 


placidity of her nature holding a promise of submissive- 
ness* by the charm of her girlish mysteriousness, ex- 
cited his passion and allayed his fears as to the future. 

His absences from Sulaco were long. On returning 
from the longest of them, he made out lighters loaded 
with blocks of stone lying under the cliff of the Great 
Isabel; cranes and scaffolding above; workmen’s figures 
moving about, and a small lighthouse already rising 
from its foundations on the edge of the cliff. 

At this unexpected, undreamt-of, startling sight, he 
thought himself lost irretrievably. What could save 
him from detection now.? Nothing! He was struck 
with amazed dread at this turn of chance, that would 
kindle a far-reaching light upon the only secret spot of 
his life; that life whose very essence, value, reality, 
consisted in its reflection from the admiring eyes of 
men. All of it but that thing which was beyond com- 
mon comprehension; which stood between him and 
the power that hears and gives effect to the evil inten- 
tion of curses. It was dark. Not every man had 
such a darkness. And they were going to put a light 
there. A light! He saw it shining upon disgrace, 
poverty, contempt. Somebody was sure to. . . . 

Perhaps somebody had already. . . . 

The incomparable Nostromo, the Capataz, the re- 
spected and feared Captain Fidanza, the unquestioned 
patron of secret societies, a republican like old Giorgio, 
and a revolutionist at heart (but in another manner), 
was on the point of jumping overboard from the deck 
of his own schooner. That man, subjective almost to 
insanity, looked suicide deliberately in the face. But 
he never lost his head. He was checked by the thought 
that this was no escape. He imagined himself dead, 
and the disgrace, the shame going on. Or, rather, prop- 
erly speaking, he could not imagine himself dead. He 


526 


NOSTROMO 


was possessed too strongly by the sense of his own ex- 
istence, a thing of infinite duration in its changes, to 
grasp the notion of finality. The earth goes on for 
ever. 

And he was courageous. It was a corrupt courage, 
but it was as good for his purposes as the other kind. 
He sailed close to the cliff of the Great Isabel, throwing 
a penetrating glance from the deck at the mouth of the 
ravine, tangled in an undisturbed growth of bushes. 
He sailed close enough to exchange hails with the work- 
men, shading their eyes on the edge of the sheer drop 
of the cliff overhung by the jib-head of a powerful crane. 
He perceived that none of them had any occasion even 
to approach the ravine where the silver lay hidden; let 
alone to enter it. In the harbour he learned that no 
one slept on the island. The labouring gangs returned 
to port every evening, singing chorus songs in the 
empty lighters towed by a harbour tug. For the 
moment he had nothing to fear. 

But afterwards.^ he asked himself. Later, when a 
keeper came to live in the cottage that was being built 
some hundred and fifty yards back from the low light- 
tower, and four hundred or so from the dark, shaded, 
jungly ravine, containing the secret of his safety, of his 
influence, of his magnificence, of his power over the fu- 
ture, of his defiance of ill-luck, of every possible be- 
trayal from rich and poor alike — what then? He could 
never shake off the treasure. His audacity, greater 
than that of other men, had welded that vein of silver 
into his life. And th^ feeling of fearful and ardent sub- 
jection, the feeling of his slavery — so irremediable and 
profound that often, in his thoughts, he compared 
himself to the legendary Gringos, neither dead nor 
alive, bound down to their conquest of unlawful wealth 
on Azuera — weighed heavily on the independent Cap- 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


527 


tain Fidanza, owner and master of a coasting schooner, 
whose smart appearance (and fabulous good-luck in 
trading) were so well known along the western sea- 
board of a vast continent. 

Fiercely whiskered and grave, a shade less supple in 
his walk, the vigour and symmetry of his powerful 
limbs lost in the vulgarity of a brown tweed suit, made 
by Jews in the slums of London, and sold by the cloth- 
ing department of the Compania Anzani, Captain 
Fidanza was seen in the streets of Sulaco attending to 
his business, as usual, that trip. And, as usual, he al- 
lowed it to get about that he had made a great profit 
on his cargo. It was a cargo of salt fish, and Lent was 
approaching. He was seen in tramcars going to and 
fro between the town and the harbour; he talked with 
people in a cafe or two in his measured, steady voice. 
Captain Fidanza was seen. The generation that would 
know nothing of the famous ride to Cayta was not born 
yet. 

Nostromo, the miscalled Capataz de Cargadores, had 
made for himself, under his rightful name, another 
public existence, but modified by the new conditions, 
less picturesque, more difficult to keep up in the in- 
creased size and varied population of Sulaco, the pro- 
gressive capital of the Occidental Republic. 

Captain Fidanza, unpicturesque, but always a little 
mysterious, was recognized quite sufficiently under the 
lofty glass and iron roof of the Sulaco railway station. 
He took a local train, and got out in Rincon, where he 
visited the widow of the Cargador who had died of his 
wounds (at the dawn of the New Era, like Don Jose 
Avellanos) in the patio of the Casa Gould. He con- 
sented to sit down and drink a glass of cool lemonade 
in the hut, while the woman, standing up, poured a 
perfect torrent of words to which he did not listen. 


528 


NOSTROMO 


He left some money with her, as usual. The orphaned 
children, growing up and well schooled, calling him 
uncle, clamoured for his blessing. He gave that, too; 
and in the doorway paused for a moment to look at the 
flat face of the San Tome mountain with a faint frown. 
This slight contraction of his bronzed brow casting a 
marked tinge of severity upon his usual unbending ex- 
pression, was observed at the Lodge which he attended 
— but went away before the banquet. He wore it at 
the meeting of some good comrades, Italians and Occi- 
dentals, assembled in his honour under the presidency 
of an indigent, sickly, somewhat hunchbacked little 
photographer, with a white face and a magnanimous 
soul dyed crimson by a bloodthirsty hate of all capital- 
ists, oppressors of the two hemispheres. The heroic 
Giorgio Viola, old revolutionist, would have under- 
stood nothing of his opening speech; and Captain 
Fidanza, lavishly generous as usual to some poor com- 
rades, made no speech at all. He had listened, frowning 
with his mind far away, and walked off unapproachable, 
silent, like a man full of cares. 

His frown deepened as, in the early morning, he 
watched the stone-masons go off to the Great Isabel, 
in lighters loaded with squared blocks of stone, enough 
to add another course to the squat light-tower. That 
was the rate of the work. One course per day. 

And Captain Fidanza meditated. The presence of 
strangers on the island would cut him completely off the 
treasure. It had been difficult and dangerous enough 
before. He was afraid, and he was angry. He thought 
with the resolution of a master and the cunning of a 
cowed slave. Then he went ashore. 

He was a man of resource and ingenuity; and, as 
usual, the expedient he found at a critical moment was 
effective enough to alter the situation radically. He 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


529 


had the gift of evolving safety out of the very danger, 
this incomparable Nostromo, this “fellow in a thou- 
sand.” With Giorgio established on the Great Isabel, 
there would be no need for concealment. He would be 
able to go openly, in daylight, to see his daughters — 
one of his daughters — and stay late talking to the old 
Garibaldino. Then in the dark . . . Night after 
night . . . He would dare to grow rich quicker 
now. He yearned to clasp, embrace, absorb, subjugate 
in unquestioned possession this treasure, whose tyranny 
had weighed upon his mind, his actions, his very sleep. 

He went to see his friend Captain Mitchell — and the 
thing was done as Dr. Monygham had related to Mrs. 
Gould. When the project was mooted to the Garibal- 
dino, something like the faint reflection, the dim ghost 
of a very ancient smile, stole under the white and enor- 
mous moustaches of the old hater of kings and ministers. 
His daughters were the object of his anxious care. The 
younger, especially. Linda, with her mother’s voice, 
had taken more her mother’s place. Her deep, vibrat- 
ing “Eh, Padre.f^” seemed, but for the change of the 
word, the very echo of the impassioned, remonstrating 
“Eh, Giorgio.^” of poor Signora Teresa. It was his 
fixed opinion that the town was no proper place for 
his girls. The infatuated but guileless Ramirez was 
the object of his profound aversion, as resuming the 
sins of the country whose people were blind, vile 
esclavos. 

On his return from his next voyage. Captain Fidanza 
found the Violas settled in the light-keeper’s cottage. 
His knowledge of Giorgio’s idiosyncrasies had not 
played him false. The Garibaldino had refused to en- 
tertain the idea of any companion whatever, except 
his girls. And Captain Mitchell, anxious to please his 
poor Nostromo, with that felicity of inspiration which 


530 


NOSTROMO 


only true affection can give, had formally appointed 
Linda Viola as under-keeper of the Isabel’s Light. 

“The light is private property,” he used to explain. 
“It belongs to my Company. I’ve the power to nomi- 
nate whom I like, and Viola it shall be. It’s about the 
only thing Nostromo — a man worth his weight in gold, 
mind you — has ever asked me to do for him.” 

Directly his schooner was anchored opposite the New 
Custom House, with its sham air of a Greek temple, flat- 
roofed, with a colonnade. Captain Fidanza went pulling 
his small boat out of the harbour, bound for the Great 
Isabel, openly in the light of a declining day, before 
all men’s eyes, with a sense of having mastered the 
fates. He must establish a regular position. He 
would ask him for his daughter now. He thought of 
Giselle as he pulled. Linda loved him, perhaps, but 
the old man would be glad to keep the eldest, who had 
his wife’s voice. 

He did not pull for the narrow strand where he had 
landed with Decoud, and afterwards alone on his first 
visit to the treasure. He made for the beach at the 
other end, and walked up the regular and gentle slope 
of the wedge-shaped island. Giorgio Viola, whom he 
saw from afar, sitting on a bench under the front wall 
of the cottage, lifted his arm slightly to his loud hail. 
He walked up. Neither of the girls appeared. 

“It is good here,” said the old man, in his austere, 
far-away manner. 

Nostromo nodded; then, after a short silence — 

“You saw my schooner pass in not two hours ago.^^ 
Do you know why I am here before, so to speak, my 
anchor has fairly bitten into the ground of this port of 
Sulaco.?” 

“You are welcome like a son,” the old man declared, 
quietly, staring away upon the sea. ^ 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


531 


“Ah! thy son. I know. I am what thy son would 
have been. It is well, viejo. It is a very good welcome. 

Listen, I have come to ask you for ” 

A sudden dread came upon the fearless and incorrup- 
tible Nostromo. He dared not utter the name in his 
mind. The slight pause only imparted a marked weight 
and solemnity to the changed end of the phrase. 

“For my wife!” . . . His heart was beating 

fast. “It is time you ” 

The Garibaldino arrested him with an extended arm. 
“That was left for you to judge.” 

He got up slowly. His beard, undipped since 
Teresa’s death, thick, snow-white, covered his powerful 
chest. He turned his head to the door, and called out 
in his strong voice — 

“Linda.” 

Her answer came sharp and faint from within; and the 
appalled Nostromo stood up, too, but remained mute, 
gazing at the door. He was afraid. He was not afraid 
of being refused the girl he loved — no mere refusal could 
stand between him and a woman he desired — but the 
shining spectre of the treasure rose before him, claiming 
his allegiance in a silence that could not be gainsaid. 
He was afraid, because, neither dead nor alive, like the 
Gringos on Azuera, he belonged body and soul to the 
unlawfulness of his audacity. He was afraid of be- 
ing forbidden the island. He was afraid, and said 
nothing. 

Seeing the two men standing up side by side to await 
her, Linda stopped in the doorway. Nothing could alter 
the passionate dead whiteness of her face; but her black 
eyes seemed to catch and concentrate all the light of the 
low sun in a flaming spark within the black depths, 
covered at once by the slow descent of heavy eyelids. 
“Behold thy husband, master, and benefactor.” Old 


532 NOSTROMO 

Viola’s voice resounded with a force that seemed to fill 
the whole gulf. 

She stepped forward with her eyes nearly closed, like a 
sleep-walker in a beatific dream. 

Nostromo made a superhuman effort. “It is time, 
Linda, we two were betrothed,” he said, steadily, in his 
level, careless, unbending tone. 

She put her hand into his offered palm, lowering her 
head, dark with bronze glints, upon which her father’s 
hand rested for a moment. 

“And so the soul of the dead is satisfied.” 

This came from Giorgio Viola, who went on talking 
for a while of his dead wife; while the two, sitting side by 
side, never looked at each other. Then the old man 
ceased; and Linda, motionless, began to speak. 

“Ever since I felt I lived in the world, I have lived 
for you alone, Gian’ Battista. And that you knew! 
You knew it . . . Battistino.” 

She pronounced the name exactly with her mother’s 
intonation. A gloom as of the grave covered Nos- 
tromo’s heart. 

“Yes. I knew,” he said. 

The heroic Garibaldino sat on the same bench bowing 
his hoary head, his old soul dwelling alone with its 
memories, tender and violent, terrible and dreary — 
solitary on the earth full of men. 

And Linda, his best-loved daughter, was saying, “I 
was yours ever since I can remember. I had only to 
think of you for the earth to become empty to my eyes. 
When you were there, I could see no one else. I was 
yours. Nothing is changed. The world belongs to 
you, and you let me live in it,” . . . She dropped 

her low, vibrating voice to a still lower note, and found 
other things to say — torturing for the man at her sida 
Her murmur ran on ardent and voluble. She did not 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


533 


seem to see her sister, who came out with an altar-cloth 
she was embroidering in her hands, and passed in front 
of them, silent, fresh, fair, with a quick glance and a 
faint smile, to sit a little away on the other side of 
Nostromo. 

The evening was still. The sun sank almost to the 
edge of a purple ocean; and the white lighthouse, livid 
against the background of clouds filling the head of the 
gulf, bore the lantern red and glowing, like a live ember 
kindled by ’the fire of the sky. Giselle, indolent and 
demure, raised the altar-cloth from time to time to hide 
nervous yawns, as of a young panther. 

Suddenly Linda rushed at her sister, and seizing her 
head, covered her face with kisses. Nostromo’s brain 
reeled. When she left her, as if stunned by the violent 
caresses, with her hands lying in her lap, the slave of 
the treasure felt as if he could shoot that woman. Old 
Giorgio lifted his leonine head. 

“Where are you going, Linda.f^” 

“To the light, padre mio.” 

“Si, si — to your duty.” 

He got up, too, looked after his eldest daughter; then, 
in a tone whose festive note seemed the echo of a mood 
lost in the night of ages — 

“I am going in to cook something. Aha! Son! The 
old man knows where to find a bottle of wine, too.” 

He turned to Giselle, with a change to austere ten- 
derness. 

“And you, little one, pray not to the God of priests 
and slaves, but to the God of orphans, of the oppressed, 
of the poor, of little children, to give thee a man like 
this one for a. husband.” 

His hand rested heavily for a moment on Nostromo’s 
shoulder; then he went in. The hopeless slave of the 
San Tome silver felt at these words the venomous fangs 


534 


NOSTROMO 


of jealousy biting deep into his heart. He was ap- 
palled by the novelty of the experience, by its force, 
by its physical intimacy. A husband! A husband 
for her! And yet it was natural that Giselle should 
have a husband at some time or other. He had never 
realized that before. In discovering that her beauty 
could belong to another he felt as though he could 
kill this one of old Giorgio’s daughters also. He mut- 
tered moodily — 

“They say you love Ramirez.” 

She shook her head without looking at him. Cop- 
pery glints rippled to and fro on the wealth of her gold 
hair. Her smooth forehead had the soft, pure sheen 
of a priceless pearl in the splendour of the sunset, mingl- 
ing the gloom of starry spaces, the purple of the sea, and 
the crimson of the sky in a magnificent stillness. 

“No,” she said, slowly. “I never loved him. I 
think I never . . . He loves me — perhaps.” 

The seduction of her slow voice died out of the air, 
and her raised eyes remained fixed on nothing, as if 
indifferent and without thought. 

“Ramirez told you he loved you?” asked Nostromo, 
restraining himself. 

“Ah! once — one evening . . 

“The miserable . . . Ha!” 

He had jumped up as if stung by a gad-fly, and stood 
before her mute with anger. 

Misericordia Divina! You, too, Gian’ Battista! 
Poor wretch that I am!” she lamented in ingenuous 
tones. “I told Linda, and she scolded — she scolded. 
Am I to live blind, dumb, and deaf in this world? And 
she told father, who took down his gun and cleaned it. 
Poor Ramirez! Then you came, and she told you.” 

He looked at her. He fastened his eyes upon the 
hollow of her white throat, which had the invincible 


535 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 

charm of things young, palpitating, delicate, and alive. 
Was this the child he had known.? Was it possible.? 
It dawned upon him that in these last years he had 
really seen very little — nothing — of her. Nothing. 
She had come into the world like a thing unknown. 
She had come upon him unawares. She was a danger. 
A frightful danger. The instinctive mood of fierce 
determination that had never failed him before the 
p)erils of this life added its steady force to the violence 
of his passion. She, in a voice that recalled to him the 
song of running water, the tinkling of a silver bell, 
continued — 

“And between you three you have brought me here 
into this ckptivity to the sky and water. Nothing else. 
Sky and water. Oh, Sanctissima Madre. My hair 
shall turn grey on this tedious island. I could hate you, 
Gian’ Battista!” 

He laughed loudly. Her voice enveloped him like a 
caress. She bemoaned her fate, spreading unconsciously, 
like a flower its perfume in the coolness of the evening, 
the indefinable seduction of her person. Was it her 
fault that nobody ever had admired Linda.? Even 
when they were little, going out with their mother to 
Mass, she remembered that people took no notice of 
Linda, who was fearless, and chose instead to frighten 
her, who was timid, with their attention. It was her 
hair like gold, she supposed. 

He broke out — 

“Your hair like gold, and your eyes like violets, and 
your lips like the rose; your round arms, your white 
throat.” . . . 

Imperturbable in the indolence of her pose, she 
blushed deeply all over to the roots of her hair. She 
was not conceited. She was no more self-conscious than 
a flower. But she was pleased. And perhaps even a 


536 


NOSTROMO 


flower loves to hear itself praised. He glanced down, 
and added, impetuously — 

“Your little feet!” 

Leaning back against the rough stone wall of the 
cottage, she seemed to bask languidly in the warmth 
of the rosy flush. Only her lowered eyes glanced at 
her little feet. 

“Ahd so you are going at last to marry our Linda. 
She is terrible. Ah! now she will understand better 
since you have told her you love her. She will not be so 
fierce.” 

^^Chica!'' said Nostromo, “I have not told her any- 
thing.” 

“Then make haste. Come to-morrow. Come and 
tell her, so that I may have some peace from her scolding 
and — perhaps — who knows . . .” 

“Be allowed to listen to your Ramirez, eh? Is that 
it? You . . .” 

“Mercy of God! How violent you are, Giovanni,” 
she said, unmoved. “Who is Ramirez 

Ramirez . . . Who is he?” she repeated, dream- 

ily, in the dusk and gloom of the clouded gulf, with a 
low red streak in the west like a hot bar of glowing 
iron laid across the entrance of a world sombre as a 
cavern, where the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores 
had hidden his conquests of love and wealth. 

“Listen, Giselle,”* he said, in measured tones; “I 
will tell no word of love to your sister. Do you want 
to know why?” 

“Alas! I could not understand perhaps, Giovanni. 
Father says you are not like other men; that no one had 
ever understood you properly; that the rich will be 
surprised yet. . . . Oh! saints in heaven! I am 

weary.” 

She raised her embroidery to conceal the lower 


537 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 

part of her face, then let it fall on her lap. The 
lantern was shaded on the land side, but slanting 
away from the dark column of the lighthouse they 
could see the long shaft of light, kindled by Linda, go 
out to strike the expiring glow in a horizon of purple 
and red. 

Giselle Viola, with her head resting against the wall of 
the house, her eyes half closed, and her little feet, in 
white stockings and black slippers, crossed over each 
other, seemed to surrender herself, tranquil and fatal, 
to the gathering dusk. The charm of her body, the 
promising mysteriousness of her indolence, went out 
into the night of the Placid Gulf like a fresh and 
intoxicating fragrance spreading out in the shadows, 
impregnating the air. The incorruptible Nostromo 
breathed her ambient seduction in the tumultuous 
heaving of his breast. Before leaving the harbour 
he had thrown off the store clothing of Captain Fidanza, 
for greater ease in the long pull out to the islands. He 
stood before her in the red sash and check shirt as he 
used to appear on the Company’s wharf— a Mediter- 
ranean sailor come ashore to try his luck in Costaguana. 
The dusk of purple and red enveloped him, too — close, 
soft, profound, as no more than fifty yards from that 
spot it had gathered evening after evening about the 
self -destructive passion of Don Martin Decoud’s utter 
scepticism, flaming up to death in solitude. 

“You have got to hear,” he began at last, with per- 
fect self-control. “I shall say no word of love to your 
sister, to whom I am betrothed from this evening, 
because it is you that I love. It is you!” . . . 

The dusk let him see yet the tender and voluptuous 
smile that came instinctively upon her lips shaped for 
love and kisses, freeze hard in the drawn, haggard lines 
of terror. He could not restrain himself any longer. 


538 


NOSTROMO 


While she shrank from his approach, her arms went 
out to him, abandoned and regal in the dignity of her 
languid surrender. He held her head in his two hands, 
and showered rapid kisses upon the upturned face that 
gleamed in the purple dusk. Masterful and tender, 
he was entering slowly upon the fulness of his possession. 
And he perceived that she was crying. Then the in- 
comparable Capataz, the man of careless loves, became 
gentle and caressing, like a woman to the grief of a 
child. He murmured to her fondly. He sat down by 
her and nursed her fair head on his breast. He called 
her his star and his little flower. 

It had grown dark. From the living-room of the 
light-keeper’s cottage, where Giorgio, one of the Im- 
mortal Thousand, was bending his leonine and heroic 
head over a charcoal fire, there came the sound of 
sizzling and the aroma of an artistic /nffwra. 

In the obscure disarray of that thing, happening like a 
cataclysm, it was in her feminine head that some gleam 
of reason survived. He was lost to the world in their 
embraced stillness. But she said, whispering into his 
ear— 

“God of mercy! WThat will become of me — ^here — 
now — between this sky and this water I hate? Linda, 
Linda — I see her!” . . . She tried to get out of his 

arms, suddenly relaxed at the sound of that name. But 
there was no one approaching their black shapes, en- 
laced and struggling on the white background of the 
wall. “Linda! Poor Linda! I tremble! I shall die 
of fear before my poor sister Linda, betrothed to-day 
to Giovanni — my lover! Giovanni, you must have been 
mad! I cannot understand you! You are not like 
other men! I will not give you up — never — only to 
God himself! But why have you done this blind, mad, 
cruel, frightful thing?” 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


539 


Released, she hung her head, let fall her hands. The 
altar-cloth, as if tossed by a great wind, lay far away 
from them, gleaming white on the black ground. 

“From fear of losing my hope of you,” said Nostromo. 

“You knew that you had my soul! You know every- 
thing! It was made for you! But what could stand 
between you and me? What? Tell me!” she re- 
peated, without impatience, in superb assurance. 

“Your dead mother,” he said, very low. 

“Ah! . . . Poor mother! She has always . . . 

She is a saint in heaven now, and I cannot give you 
up to her. No, Giovanni. Only to God alone. You 
were mad — but it is done. Oh! what have you done? 
Giovanni, my beloved, my life, my master, do not leave 
me here in this grave of clouds. You cannot leave me 
now. You must take me away — at once — this instant 
— in the little boat. Giovanni, carry me off to-night, 
from my fear of Linda’s eyes, before I have to look at 
her again.” 

She nestled close to him. The slave of the San Tome 
silver felt the weight as of chains upon his limbs, a pres- 
sure as of a cold hand upon his lips. He struggled 
against the spell. 

“ I cannot,” he said. “Not yet. There is something 
that stands between us two and the freedom of the 
world.” 

She pressed her form closer to his side with a subtle 
and naive instinct of seduction. 

“You rave, Giovanni— my lover!” she whispered, 
engagingly. “What can there be? Carry me off in 
thy very hands — to Dona Emilia — away from here. 
I am not very heavy.” 

It seemed as though she expected him to lift her up at 
once in his two palms. She had lost the notion of all 
impossibility. Anything could happen on this night of 


540 NOSTROMO 

wonder. As he made no movement, she almost cried 
aloud — 

“I tell you I am afraid of Linda! ’’ And still he did not 
move. She became quiet and wily. ' “What can there 
be.^” she asked, coaxingly. 

He felt her warm, breathing, alive, quivering in the 
hollow of his arm. In the exulting consciousness of his 
strength, and the triumphant excitement of his mind, he 
struck out for his freedom. 

“A treasure,” he said. All was still. She did not 
understand. “A treasure. A treasure of silver to buy 
a gold crown for thy brow.” 

“A treasure.^” she repeated in a faint voice, as if 
from the depths of a dream. “What is it you say.^” 

She disengaged herself gently. He got up and looked 
down at her, aware of her face, of her hair, her lips, the 
dimples on her cheeks^ — seeing the fascination of her 
person in the night of the gulf as if in the blaze of noon- 
day. Her nonchalant and seductive voice trembled 
with the excitement of admiring awe and ungovernable 
curiosity. 

“A treasure of silver!” she stammered out. Then 
pressed on faster: “What.^ Where.^ How did you 
get it, Giovanni?” 

He wrestled with the spell of captivity. It was as if 
striking a heroic blow that he burst out — 

“Like a thief!” 

The densest blackness of the Placid Gulf seemed to 
fall upon his head. He could not see her now. She had 
vanished into a long, obscure abysmal silence, whence 
her voice came back to him after a time with a faint 
glimmer, which was her face. 

“I love you! I love you!” 

These words gave him an unwonted sense of freedom; 
they cast a spell stronger than the accursed spell of the 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


541 


treasure; they changed his weary subjection to that 
dead thing into an exulting conviction of his power. 
He would cherish her, he said, in a splendour as great 
as Dona Emilia’s. The rich lived on wealth stolen 
from the people, but he had taken from the rich noth- 
ing — nothing that was not lost to them already by their 
folly and their betrayal. For he had been betrayed — 
he said — deceived, tempted. She believed him. . . . 
He had kept the treasure for purposes of revenge; but 
now he cared nothing for it. He cared only for her. 
He would put her beauty in a palace on a hill crowned 
with olive trees — a white palace above a blue sea. He 
would keep her there like a jewel in a casket. He would 
get land for her — her own land fertile with vines and 
corn — to set her little feet upon. He kissed them. . . . 
He had already paid for it all with the soul of a woman 
and the life of a man. . . . The Capataz de 

Cargadores tasted the supreme intoxication of his gen- 
erosity. He flung the mastered treasure superbly at 
her feet in the impenetrable darkness of the gulf, in 
the darkness defying — as men said — the knowledge 
of God and the wit of the devil. But she must let him 
grow rich first — he warned her. 

She listened as if hi a trance. Her fingers stirred in 
his hair. He got up from his knees reeling, weak, empty, 
as though he had flung his soul away. 

“Make haste, then,” she said. “Make haste, 
Giovanni, my lover, my master, for I will give thee 
up to no one but God. And I am afraid of Linda.” 

He guessed at her shudder, and swore to do his best. 
He trusted the courage of her love. She promised to be 
brave in order to be loved always — far awa;^ in a white 
palace upon a hill above a blue sea. Then with a timid, 
tentative eagerness she murmured — 

“Where is it.^^ Where.^^ Tell me that, Giovanni.” 


542 NOSTROMO 

He opened his mouth and remained silent — thunder- 
struck. 

“Not that! Not that!” he gasped out, appalled at 
the spell of secrecy that had kept him dumb before so 
many people falling upon his lips again with unimpaired 
force. Not even to her. Not even to her. It was too 
dangerous. “I forbid thee to ask,” he cried at her, 
deadening cautiously the anger of his voice. 

He had not regained his freedom. The spectre of the 
unlawful treasure arose, standing by her side like a figure 
of silver, pitiless and secret, with a finger on its pale lips. 
His soul died within him at the vision of himself creeping 
in presently along the ravine, with the smell of earth, of 
damp foliage in his nostrils — creeping in, determined in 
a purpose that numbed his breast, and creeping out 
again loaded with silver, with his ears alert to every 
sound. It must be done on this very night — that work 
of a craven slave! 

He stooped low, pressed the hem of her skirt to his 
lips, with a muttered command— 

“Tell him I would not stay,” and was gone suddenly 
from her,' silent, without as much as a footfall in the 
dark night. 

She sat still, her head resting indolently against the 
wall, and her little feet in white stockings and black 
slippers crossed over each other. Old Giorgio, coming 
out, did not seem to be surprised at the intelligence as 
much as she had vaguely feared. For she was full of 
inexplicable fear now — fear of everything and everybody 
except of her Giovanni and his treasure. But that was 
incredible. 

The heroic Garibaldino accepted Nostromo’s abrupl 
departure with a sagacious indulgence. He remem- 
bered his own feelings, and exhibited a masculine pene- 
tration of the true state of the case. 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


543 


“Fa bene. Let him go. Ha! ha! No matter how 
fair the woman, it galls a little. Liberty, liberty. 
There’s more than one kind! He has said the great 
word, and son Gian’ Battista is not tame.” He seemed 
to be instructing the motionless and scared Giselle. 
. . . “A man should not be tame,” he added, dog- 

matically out of the doorway. Her stillness and silence 
seemed to displease him. “Do not give way to the 
enviousness of your sister’s lot,” he admonished her, 
very grave, in his deep voice. 

Presently he had to come to the door again to call in 
his younger daughter. It was late. He shouted her 
name three times before she even moved her head. Left 
alone, she had become the helpless prey of astonish- 
ment. She walked into the bedroom she shared with 
Linda like a person profoundly asleep. That aspect 
was so marked that even old Giorgio, spectacled, raising 
his eyes from the Bible, shook his head as she shut the 
door behind her. 

She walked right across the room without looking at 
anything, and sat down at once by the open window. 
Linda, stealing down from the tower in the exuberance 
of her happiness, found her with a lighted candle at her 
back, facing the black night full of sighing gusts of wind 
and the sound of distant showers — a true night of the 
gulf, too dense for the eye of God and the wiles of the 
devil. She did not turn her head at the opening of the 
door. 

There was something in that immobility which 
reached Linda in the depths of her paradise. The elder 
sister guessed angrily: the child is thinking of that 
wretched Ramirez. Linda longed to talk. She said 
in her arbitrary voice, “Giselle!” and was not answered 
by the slightest movement. 

The girl that was going to live in a palace and walk on 


544 


NOSTROMO 


ground of her own was ready to die with terror. Not 
for anything in the world would she have turned her 
head to face her sister. Her heart was beating madly. 
She said with subdued haste — 

“Do not speak to me. I am praying.” 

Linda, disappointed, went out quietly; and Giselle 
sat on unbelieving, lost, dazed, patient, as if waiting for 
the confirmation of the incredible. The hopeless black- 
ness of the clouds seemed part of a dream, too. She 
waited. 

She did not wait in vain. The man whose soul was 
dead within him, creeping out of the ravine, weighted 
with silver, had seen the gleam of the lighted win- 
dow, and could not help retracing his steps from the 
beach. 

On that impenetrable background, obliterating the 
lofty mountains by the seaboard, she saw the slave of 
the San Tome silver, as if by an extraordinary power 
of a miracle. • She accepted his return as if henceforth 
the world could' hold no surprise for all eternity. 

She rose, compelled and rigid, and began to speak long 
before the light from within fell upon the face of the 
approaching man. 

“You have come back to carry me off. It is 
well! Open thy arms, Giovanni, my lover. I am 
coming.” 

His prudent footsteps stopped, and with his eyes 
glistening wildly, he spoke in a harsh voice: 

“Not yet. I must grow rich slowly.” ... A 
threatening note came into his tone. “Do not forget 
that you have a thief for your lover.” 

“Yes 1 Yes ! ” she whispered, hastily. “ Come nearer ! 
Listen! Do not give me up, Giovanni! Never, 
never! ... I will be patient! . . .” 

Her form drooped consolingly over the low casement 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


545 


towards the slave of the unlawful treasure. The light in 
the room went out, and weighted with silver, the mag- 
nificent Capataz clasped her round her white neck in the 
darkness of the gulf as a drowning man clutches at a 
straw. 


CHAPTER THIRTEEN 


On the day Mrs. Gould was going, in Dr. Monyg- 
ham’s words, to “give a tertulia,” Captain Fidanza 
went down the side of his schooner lying in Sulaco 
harbour, calm, unbending, deliberate in the way he sat 
down in his dinghy and took up his sculls. He was later 
than usual. The afternoon was well advanced before 
he landed on the beach of the Great Isabel, and with a 
steady pace climbed the slope of the island. 

From a distance he made out Giselle sitting in a chair 
tilted back against the end of the house, under the win- 
dow of the girl’s room. She had her embroidery in her 
hands, and held it well up to her eyes. The tranquillity 
of that girlish figure exasperated the feeling of perpetual 
struggle and strife he carried in his breast. He became 
angry. It seemed to him that she ought to hear the 
clanking of his fetters — ^his silver fetters, from afar. 
And while ashore that day, he had met the doctor with 
the evil eye, who had looked at him very hard. 

The raising of her eyes mollified him. They smiled in 
their flower-like freshness straight upon his heart. Then 
she frowned. It was a warning to be cautious. He 
stopped some distance away, and in a loud, indifferent 
tone, said — 

“Good day, Giselle. Is Linda up yet?” 

“Yes. She is in the big room with father.” 

He approached then, and, looking through the win- 
dow into the bedroom for fear of being detected by 
Linda returning there for some reason, he said, moving 
only his lips — 


546 


' THE LIGHTHOUSE 547 

“You love me?” 

“More than my life.” She went on with her em- 
broidery under his contemplating gaze and continued 
to speak, looking at her work, “ Or I could not live. I 
could not, Giovanni. For this life is like death. Oh, 
Giovanni, I shall perish if you do not take me away.” 

He smiled carelessly. “I will come to the window 
when it’s dark,” he said. 

“No, don’t, Giovanni. Not-to-night. Linda and 
father have been talking together for a long time to- 
day.” 

“What about?” 

“Ramirez, I fancy I heard. I do not know. I 
am afraid. I am always afraid. It is like dying a 
thousand times a day. Your love is to me like your 
treasure to you. It is there, but I can never get enough 
of it.” 

He looked at her very still. She was beautiful. His 
desire had grown within him. He had two masters 
now. But she was incapable of sustained emotion. 
She was sincere in what she said, but she slept placidly 
at night. When she saw him she flamed up always. 
Then only an increased taciturnity marked the change 
in her. She was afraid of betraying herself. She was 
afraid of pain, of bodily harm, of sharp words, of facing 
anger, and witnessing violence. For her soul was light 
and tender with a pagan sincerity in its impules. She 
murmured — 

“ Give up the palazzo, Giovanni, and the vineyard on 
the hills, for which we are starving our love.” 

She ceased, seeing Linda standing silent at the corner 
of the house. 

Nostromo turned to his affianced wife with a greeting, 
and was amazed at her sunken eyes, at her hollow 
cheeks, at the air of illness and anguish in her face. 


548 


NOSTROMO 


“Have you been ill?” he asked, trying to put some 
concern into this question. 

Her black eyes blazed at him. “Am I thinner?” 
she asked. 

‘ ‘ Y es — perhaps — a little . ’ ’ 

“And older?” 

“Every day counts — for all of us.” 

“I shall go grey, I fear, before the ring is on my 
finger,” she said, slowly, keeping her gaze fastened upon 
him. 

She waited for what he would say, rolling down her 
turned-up sleeves. 

“No fear of that,” he said, absently. 

She turned away as if it had been something final, and 
busied herself with household cares while Nostromo 
talked with her father. Conversation with the old 
Garibaldino was not easy. Age had left his faculties 
unimpaired, only they seemed to have withdrawn some- 
where deep within him. His answers were slow in com- 
ing, with an effect of august gravity. But that day 
he was more animated, quicker; there seemed to be 
more life in the old lion. He was uneasy for the in- 
tegrity of his honour. He believed Sidoni’s warning as 
to Ramirez’s designs upon his younger daughter. And 
he did not trust her. She was flighty. He said nothing 
of his cares to “Son Gian’ Battista.” It was a touch 
of senile vanity. He wanted to show that he was equal 
yet to the task of guarding alone the honour of his house. 

Nostromo went away early. As soon as he had dis- 
appeared, walking towards the beach, Linda stepped 
over the threshold and, with a haggard smile, sat down 
by the side of her father. 

Ever since that Sunday, when the infatuated and 
desperate Ramirez had waited for her on the wharf, she 
had no doubts whatever. The jealous ravings of that 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


549 


man were no revelation. They had only fixed with 
precision, as with a nail driven into her heart, that sense 
of unreality and deception which, instead of bliss and 
security, she had found in her intercourse with her prom- 
ised husband. She had passed on, pouring indignation 
and scorn upon Ramirez; but, that Sunday, she nearly 
died of wretchedness and shame, lying on the carved 
and lettered stone of Teresa’s grave, subscribed for by 
the engine-drivers and the fitters of the railway work- 
shops, in sign of their respect for the hero of Italian 
Unity. Old Viola had not been able to carry out his 
desire of burying his wife in the sea; and Linda wept 
upon the stone. 

The gratuitous outrage appalled her. If he wished to 
break her heart — well and good. Everything was per- 
mitted to Gian’ Battista. But why trample upon the 
pieces; why seek to humiliate her spirit? Aha! He 
could not break that. She dried her tears. And 
Giselle! Giselle! The little one that, ever since she 
could toddle, had always clung to her skirt for protec- 
tion. What duplicity! But she could not help it 
probably. When there was a man in the case the poor 
featherheaded wretch could not help herself. 

Linda had a good share of the Viola stoicism. She 
resolved to say nothing. But woman-like she put pas- 
sion into her stoicism. Giselle’s short answers, prompted 
by fearful caution, drove her beside herself by their 
curtness that resembled disdain. One day she flung 
herself upon the chair in which her indolent sister was 
lying and impressed the mark of her teeth at the base 
of the whitest neck in Sulaco. Giselle cried out. But 
she had her share of the Viola heroism. Ready to faint 
with terror, she only said, in a lazy voice, Madre de 
Dios! Are you going to eat me alive, Linda?” And 
this outburst passed off leaving no trace upon the situa- 


550 


NOSTROMO 


tion. “She knows nothing. She cannot know any- 
thing,” reflected Giselle. “Perhaps it is not true. 
It cannot be true,” Linda tried to persuade herself. 

But when she saw Captain Fidanza for the first time 
after her meeting with the distracted Ramirez, the 
certitude of her misfortune returned. She watched 
him from the doorway go away to his boat, asking her- 
self stoically, “Will they meet to-night.^” She made up 
her mind not to leave the tower for a second. When he 
had disappeared she came out and sat down by her 
father. 

The venerable Garibaldino felt, in his own words, “a 
young man yet.” In one way or another a good deal of 
talk about Ramirez had reached him of late; and his 
contempt and dislike of that man who obviously was 
not what his son would have been, had made him rest- 
less. He slept very little now; but for several nights 
past instead of reading — or only sitting, with Mrs. 
Gould’s silver spectacles on his nose, before the open 
Bible, he had been prowling actively all about the island 
with his old gun, on watch over his honour. 

Linda, laying her thin brown hand on his knee, tried 
to soothe his excitement. Ramirez was not in Sulaco. 
Nobody knew where he was. He was gone. His talk 
of what he would do meant nothing. 

“No,” the old man interrupted. “But son Gian’ 
Battista told me — quite of himself — that the cowardly 
esclavo was drinking and gambling with the rascals of 
Zapiga, over there on the north side of the gulf. He 
may get some of the worst scoundrels of that scoun- 
drelly town of negroes to help him in his attempt upon 
the little one. . . . But I am not so old. No!” 

She argued earnestly against the probability of any 
attempt being made; and at last the old man fell silent, 
chewing his white moustache. Women had their ob- 


551 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 

stinate notions which must be humoured — his poor wife 
was like that, and Linda resembled her mother. It was 
not seemly for a man to argue. “May be. May be,” 
he mumbled. 

She was by no means easy in her mind. She loved 
Nostromo. She turned her eyes upon Giselle, sitting at 
a distance, with something of maternal tenderness, and 
the jealous anguish of a rival outraged in her defeat. 
Then she rose and walked over to her. 

“Listen — you,” she said, roughly. 

The invincible candour of the gaze, raised up all violet 
and dew, excited her rage and admiration. She had 
beautiful eyes — the Chica — this vile thing of white flesh 
and black deception. She did not know whether she 
wanted to tear them out with shouts of vengeance or 
cover up their mysterious and shameless innocence with 
kisses of pity and love. And suddenly they became 
empty, gazing blankly at her, except for a little fear not 
quite buried deep enough with all the other emotions 
in Giselle’s heart. 

Linda said, “Ramirez is boasting in town that he will 
carry you off from the island.” 

“What folly!” answered the other, and in a perver- 
sity born of long restraint, she added: “He is not the 
man,” in a jesting tone with a trembling audacity. 

“No.^” said Linda, through her clenched teeth. “Is 
he not.^ Well, then, look to it; because father has been 
walking about with a loaded gun at might.” 

“It is not good for him. You must tell him not to, 
Linda. He will not listen to me.” 

“I shall say nothing — never any more — to anybody,” 
cried Linda, passionately. 

This could not last, thought Giselle. Giovanni must 
take her away soon — the very next time he came. She 
would not suffer these terrors for ever so much silver. 


552 


NOSTROMO 


To speak with her sister made her ill. But she was not 
uneasy at her father’s watchfulness. She had begged 
Nostromo not to come to the wiridow that night. He 
had promised to keep away for this once. And she 
did not know, could not guess or imagine, that he had 
another reason for coming on the island. 

Linda had gone straight to the tower. It was time to 
light up. She unlocked the little door, and went heavily 
up the spiral staircase, carrying her love for the magnifi- 
cent Capataz de Cargadores like an ever-increasing load 
of shameful fetters. No; she could not throw it off. 
No; let Heaven dispose of these two. And moving 
about the lantern, filled with twilight and the sheen of 
the moon, with careful movements she lighted the lamp. 
Then her arms fell along her body. 

“And with our mother looking on,” she murmured. 
“My own sister-r-^the ChicaT^ 

The whole refracting apparatus, with its brass fittings 
and rings of prisms, glittered and sparkled like a dome- 
shaped shrine of diamonds, containing not a lamp, but 
some sacred flame, dominating the sea. And Linda, the 
keeper, in black, with a pale face, drooped low in a 
wooden chair, alone with her jealousy, far above the 
shames and passions of the earth. A strange, dragging 
pain as if somebody were pulling her about brutally 
by her dark hair with bronze glints, made her put her 
hands up to her temples. They would meet. They 
would meet. And she knew where, too. At the window. 
The sweat of torture fell in drops on her cheeks, while 
the moonlight in the offing closed as if with a colossal 
bar of silver the entrance of the Placid Gulf — the sombre 
cavern of clouds and stillness in the surf-fretted sea- 
board, 

Linda Viola stood up suddenly with a finger on her lip. 
He loved neither her nor her sister. The whole thing 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


553 


seemed so objectless as to frighten her, and also give her 
some hope. Why did he not carry her off.? What pre- 
vented him.? He was incomprehensible. What were 
they waiting for.? For what end were these two lying 
and deceiving.? Not for the ends of their love. There 
was no such thing. The hope of regaining him for 
herself made her break her vow of not leaving the tower 
that night. She must talk at once to her father, who 
was wise, and would understand. She ran down the 
spiral stairs. At the moment of opening the door at 
the bottom she heard the sound of the first shot ever 
fired on the Great Isabel. 

She felt a shock, as though the bullet had struck her 
breast. She ran on without pausing. The cottage was 
dark. She cried at the door, ‘‘Giselle! Giselle!” then 
dashed round the corner and screamed her sister’s name 
at the open window, without getting an answer; but 
as she was rushing, distracted, round the house, Giselle 
came out of the door, and darted past her, running 
silently, her hair loose, and her eyes staring straight 
ahead. She seemed to skim along the grass as if on 
tiptoe, and vanished. 

Linda walked on slowly, with her arms stretched out 
before her. All was still on the island; she did not know 
where she was going. The tree under which Martin 
Decoud spent his last days, beholding life like a suc- 
cession of senseless images, threw a large blotch of 
black shade upon the grass. Suddenly she saw her 
father, standing quietly all alone in the moonlight. 

The Garibaldino — big, erect, with his snow-white 
hair and beard — had a monumental repose in his im- 
mobility, leaning upon a rifle. She put her hand upon 
his arm lightly. He never stirred. 

“What have you done.?” she asked, in her ordinary 
voice. 


554 


NOSTROMO 


“I have shot Ramirez — infame!’’ he answered, .with 
his eyes directed to where the shade was blackest. 
“Like a thief he came, and like a thief he fell. The 
child had to be protected.” 

He did not offer to move an inch, to advance a single 
step. He stood there, rugged and unstirring, like a 
statue of an old man guarding the honour of his house. 
Linda removed her trembling hand from his arm, firm 
and steady like an arm of stone, and, without a word, 
entered the blackness of the shade. She saw a stir of 
formless shapes on the ground, and stopped short. A 
murmur of despair and tears grew louder to her strained 
hearing. 

“I entreated you not to come to-night. Oh, my 
Giovanni! And you promised. Oh! Why — why did 
you come, Giovanni?” 

It was her sister’s voice. It broke on a heartrending 
sob. And the voice of the resourceful Capataz de 
Cargadores, master and slave of the San Tome treasure, 
who had been caught unawares by old Giorgio while 
stealing across the open towards the ravine to get some 
more silver, answered careless and cool, but sounding 
startlingly weak from the ground. 

“It seemed as though I could not live through the 
night without seeing thee once more — my star, my little 
fiower.” 

* * * * :ic 

The brilliant tertulia was just over, the last guests had 
departed, and the Senor Administrador had gone to his 
room already, when Dr. Monygham, who had been ex- 
pected in the evening but had not turned up, arrived 
driving along the wood-block pavement under the 
electric-lamps of the deserted Calle de la Constitucion, 
and found the great gateway of the Casa still open. 


555 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 

He limped in, stumped up the stairs, and found the 
fat and sleek Basilio on the point of turning? off the 
lights in the sala. The prosperous majordomo re- 
mained open-mouthed at this late invasion. 

“Don’t put out the lights,” commanded the doctor. 
“I want to see the senora.” 

“The senora is in the Senor Adminstrador’s cancil- 
laria,” said Basilio, in an unctuous voice. “The Senor 
Administrador starts for the mountain in an hour. 
There is some trouble with the workmen to be feared, it 
appears. A shameless people without reason and de- 
cency. And idle, senor. Idle.” 

“You are shamelessly lazy and imbecile yourself,” 
said the doctor, with that faculty for exasperation which 
made him so generally beloved. “Don’t put the lights 
out.” 

Basilio retired with dignity. Dr. Monygham, waiting 
in the brilliantly lighted sala, heard presently atloor close 
at the further end of the house. A jungle of spurs 
died out. The Senor Administrador was off to the 
mountain. 

With a measured swish of her long train, flashing with 
jewels and the shimmer of silk, her delicate head bowed 
as if under the weight of a mass of fair hair, in which 
the silver threads were lost, the “first lady of Sulaco,” 
as Captain Mitchell used to describe her, moved along 
the lighted corridor, wealthy beyond great dreams of 
wealth, considered, loved, respected, honoured, and as 
solitary as any human being had ever been, perhaps, 
on this earth. 

The doctor’s “Mrs. Gould! One minute!” stopped 
her with a start at the door of the lighted and empty 
sala. From the similarity of mood and circumstance, 
the sight of the doctor, standing there all alone amongst 
the groups of furniture, recalled to her emotional mem- 


556 


NOSTROMO 


ory her unexpected meeting with Martin Decoud; she 
seemed to hear in the silence the voice of that man, 
dead miserably so many years ago, pronounce the 
words, “Antonia left her fan here.” But it was the 
doctor’s voice that spoke, a little altered by his excite- 
ment. She remarked his shining eyes. 

“Mrs. Gould, you are wanted. Do you know what 
has happened.^ You remember what I told you yester- 
day about Nostromo. Well, it seems that a lancha, 
a decked boat, coming from Zapiga, with four negroes 
in her, passing close to the Great Isabel, was hailed 
from the cliff by a woman’s voice — Linda’s, as a matter 
of fact — commanding them (it’s a moonlight night) to 
go round to the beach and take up a wounded man to 
the town. The 'patron (from whom I’ve heard all this), 
of course, did so at once. He told me that when they 
got round to the low side of the Great Isabel, they 
found Linda Viola waiting for them. They followed 
her: she led them under a tree not far from the cottage. 
There they found Nostromo lying on the ground with 
his head in the younger girl’s lap, and father Viola 
standing some distance off leaning on his gun. Under 
Linda’s direction they got a table out of the cottage for a 
stretcher, after breaking off the legs. They are here, 
Mrs. Gould. I mean Nostromo and — and Giselle. 
The negroes brought him in to the first-aid hospital 
near the harbour. He made the attendant send for 
me. But it is not me he wanted to see — it was you, 
Mrs. Gould! It was you.” 

“Me?” whispered Mrs. Gould, shrinking a little. 

“Yes, you!” the doctor burst out. “He begged me 
—his enemy, as he thinks — to bring you to him at once. 
It seems he has something to say to you alone.” 

“Impossible!” murmured Mrs. Gould. 

“He said to me, ‘Remind her that I have done some- 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


557 


[thing to keep a roof over her head.’ . . . Mrs. 

Gould,” the doctor pursued, in the greatest excite- 
ment. “Do you remember the silver? The silver in 
, the lighter — that was lost!” 

Mrs. Gould remembered. But she did not say she 
hated the mere mention of that silver. Frankness 
personified, she remembered with an exaggerated horror 
that for the first and last time of her life she had con- 
cealed the truth from her husband about that very 
silver. She had been corrupted by her fears at that 
time, and she had never forgiven herself. Moreover, 
that silver, which would never have come down if her 
husband had been made acquainted with the news 
brought by Decoud, had been in a roundabout way 
nearly the cause of Dr. Monygham’s death. And these 
things appeared to her very dreadful. 

“Was it lost, though?” the doctor exclaimed. “I’ve 
always felt that there was a mystery about our Nos- 
tromo ever since. I do believe he wants now, at the 
point of death ” 

“The point of death,” repeated Mrs. Gould. 

“Yes. Yes. . . . He wants perhaps to tell 

you something concerning that silver which ” 

“Oh, no! No!” exclaimed Mrs. Gould, in a low 
voice. “Isn’t it lost and done with? Isn’t there 
enough treasure without it to make everybody in the 
world miserable?” 

The doctor remained still, in a submissive, disap- 
pointed silence. At last he ventured, very low — 

“And there is that Viola girl, Giselle. What are 
we to do? It looks as though father and sister had ” 

Mrs. Gould admitted that she felt in duty bound to 
do her best for these girls. 

“I have a volante here,” the doctor said. “If you 
don’t mind getting into that ” 


558 


NOSTROMO 


He waited, all impatience, till Mrs. Gould reap- 
peared, having thrown over her dress a grey cloak 
with a deep hood. 

It was thus that, cloaked and monastically hooded 
over her evening costume, this woman, full of endurance 
and compassion, stood by the side of the bed on which 
the splendid Capataz de Cargadores lay stretched out 
motionless on his back. The whiteness of sheets and 
pillows gave a sombre and energetic relief to his bronzed 
face, to the dark, nervous hands, so good on a tiller, 
upon a bridle and on a trigger, lying open and idle 
upon a white coverlet. 

“She is innocent,” the Capataz was saying in a deep 
and level voice, as though afraid that a louder word 
would break the slender hold his spirit still kept upon 
his body. “She is innocent. It is I alone. But no 
matter. For these ‘things I would answer to no man 
or woman alive.” 

He paused. Mrs. Gould’s face, very white within the 
shadow of the hood, bent over him with an invincible 
and dreary sadness. And the low sobs of Giselle Viola, 
kneeling at the end of the bed, her gold hair with cop- 
pery gleams loose and scattered over the Capataz’s 
feet, hardly troubled the silence of the room. 

“Ha! Old Giorgio — the guardian of thine honour! 
Fancy the Vecchio coming upon me so light of foot, so 
steady of aim. I myself could have done no better. 
But the price of a charge of powder might have been 
saved. The honour was safe. . . . Sefiora, she 

would have followed to the end of the world Nostromo 
the thief. ... I have said the word. The spell 
is broken!” 

A low moan from the girl made him cast his eyes 
down. 

“ I cannot see her. . . . No matter,” he went on, 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


559 


with the shadow of the old magnificent carelessness in 
his voice. “One kiss is enough, if there is no time for 
more. An airy soul, senora! Bright and warm, like 
sunshine — soon clouded, and soon serene. They would 
crush it there between them. Senora, cast on her the 
eye of your compassion, as famed from one end of the 
land to the other as the courage and daring of the man 
who speaks to you. She will console herself in time. 
And even Ramirez is not a bad fellow. I am not angry. 
No! It is not Ramirez who overcame the Capataz 
of the Sulaco Cargadores.” He paused, made an effort, 
and in louder voice, a little wildly, declared — 

“I die betrayed — betrayed by ” 

But he did not say by whom or by what he was dying 
betrayed. 

“She would not have betrayed me,” he began again, 
opening his eyes very wide. “She was faithful. We 
were going very far — very soon. I could have tom 
myself away from that accursed treasure for her. For 
that child I would have left boxes and boxes of it — full. 
And Decoud took four. Four ingots. Why? Picardia! 
To betray me? How could I give back the treasure 
with four ingots missing? They would have said I 
had purloined them. The doctor would have said that. 
Alas! it holds me yet!” 

Mrs. Gould bent low, fascinated — cold with appre- 
hension. 

“What became of Don Martin on that night, Nos- 
tromo?” 

“Who knows! I wondered what would become of 
me. Now I know. Death was to come upon me un- 
awares. He went away! He betrayed me. And you 
think I have killed him! You are all alike, you fine 
people. The silver has killed me. It has held me. It 
holds me yet. Nobody knows where it is. But you are 


560 


NOSTROMO 


the wife of Don Carlos, who put it into my hands and 
said, ‘Save it on your life.’ And when I returned, and 
you all thought it was lost, what do I hear? It was 
nothing of importance. Let it go. Up, Nostromo, the 
faithful, and ride away to save us, for dear life!” 

“Nostromo!” Mrs. Gould whispered, bending very 
low. “I, too, have hated the idea of that silver from 
the bottom of my heart.” ^ 

“Marvellous! — that one of you should hate the 
wealth that you know so well how to take from the 
hands of the poor. The world rests upon the poor, 
as old Giorgio says. You have been always good to the 
poor. But there is something accursed in wealth. 
Senora, shall I tell you where the treasure is? To you 1 
alone. . . . Shining! Incorruptible!” V 

A pained, involuntary reluctance lingered in his tone, 
in his eyes, plain to the woman with the genius of sym- 
pathetic intuition. She averted her glance from the 
miserable subjection of the dying man, appalled, wish- j 
ing to hear no more of the silver. j 

“No, Capataz,” she said. “No one misses it now. ^ 
Let it be lost for ever.” j 

After hearing these words, Nostromo closed his eyes, < 
uttered no word, made no movement. Outside the | 
door of the sick-room Dr. Monygham, excited to the \ 
highest pitch, his eyes shining with eagerness, came up 
to the two women. j 

“Now, Mrs. Gould,” he said, almost brutally in his | 
impatience, “tell me, was I right? There is a mystery. ' 
You have got the word of it, have you not? He told 
you ” 

“He told me nothing,” said Mrs. Gould, steadily. )^ 
The light of his temperamental enmity to Nostromo 
went out of Dr. Monygham’s eyes. He stepped back 
submissively. He did not believe Mrs. Gould. But 


561 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 

her word was law. He accepted her denial like an 
inexplicable fatality affirming the victory of Nostromo’s 
genius over his own. Even before that woman, whom 
he loved with secret devotion, he had been defeated 
by the magnificent Capataz de Cargadores, the man 
who had lived his own life on the assumption of un- 
broken fidelity, rectitude, and courage! 

“Pray send at once somebody for my carriage,” 
spoke Mrs. Gould from within her hood. Then, turn- 
ing to Giselle Viola, “Come nearer me, child; come 
closer. We will wait here.” 

Giselle Viola, heartbroken and childlike, her face 
veiled in her falling hair, crept up to her side. Mrs.. 
Gould slipped her hand through the arm of the un- 
worthy daughter of old Viola, the immaculate repub- 
lican, the hero without a stain. Slowly, gradually, 
as a withered flower droops, the head of the girl, who 
would have followed a thief to the end of the world, 
rested on the shoulder of Dona Emilia, the first lady 
of Sulaco, the wife of the Senor Administrador of the 
San Tome mine. And Mrs. Gould, feeling her sup- 
pressed sobbing, nervous and excited, had the first 
and only moment of bitterness in her life. It was 
worthy of Dr. Monygham himself. 

“Console yourself, child. Very soon he would have 
forgotten you for his t;*easure.” 

“Senora, he loved me. He loved me,” Giselle whis- 
pered, despairingly. “He loved me as no one had ever 
been loved before.” 

“I have been loved, too,” Mrs. Gould said in a severe 
tone. 

Giselle clung to her convulsively. “Oh, senora, 
but you shall live adored to the end of your life,” she 
sobbed out. 

Mrs. Gould kept an unbroken silence till the carriage 


562 


NOSTROMO 


arrived. She helped in the half-fainting girl. After 
the doctor had shut the door of the landau, she leaned 
over to him. 

“You can do nothing.^” she whispered. 

“No, Mrs. Gould. Moreover, he won’t let us touch 
him. It does not matter. I just had one look. . . . 
Useless.” 

But he promised to see old Viola and the other girl 
that very night. He could get the police-boat to take i 
him off to the island. He remained in the street, look- 
ing after the landau rolling away slowly behind the ,fj 
white mules. 

The rumour of some accident — an accident to Cap- 
tain Fidanza — had been spreading along the new quays 
with their rows of lamps and the dark shapes of tower- 
ing cranes. A knot of night prowlers — the poorest of 
the poor — hung about the door of the first-aid hospital, 
whispering in the moonlight of the empty street. 

There was no one with the wounded man but the pale 
photographer, small, frail, bloodthirsty, the hater of 
capitalists, perched on a high stool near the head of the 
bed with his knees up and his chin in his hands. He 
had been fetched by a comrade who, working late on 
the wharf, had heard from a negro belonging to a lancha, 
that Captain Fidanza had been brought ashore mor- 
tally wounded. 

“Have you any dispositions to make, comrade?” 
he asked, anxiously. “Do not forget that we want 
money for our work. The rich must be fought with 
their own weapons.” 

Nostromo made no answer. The other did not in- 
sist, remaining huddled up on the stool, shock-headed, 
wildly hairy, like a hunchbacked monkey. Then, after 
a long silence — 

“Comrade Fidanza,” he began, solemnly, “y^^ have 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


563 


refused all aid from that doctor. Is he really a danger- 
ous enemy of the people.^” 

In the dimly lit room Nostromo rolled his head slowly 
on the pillow and opened his eyes, directing at the weird 
figure perched by his bedside a glance of enigmatic and 
profound inquiry. Then his head rolled back, his eye- 
lids fell, and the Capataz de Cargadores died without a 
word or moan after an hour of immobility, broken by 
short shudders testifying to the most atrocious suffer- 
ings. 

Dr. Monygham, going out in the police-galley to the 
islands, beheld the glitter of the moon upon the gulf 
and the high black shape of the Great Isabel sending 
a shaft of light afar, from under the canopy of clouds. 

“Pull easy,” he said, wondering what he would find 
there. He tried to imagine Linda and her father, and 
discovered a strange reluctance within himself. “Pull 
easy,” he repeated. 

From the moment he fired at the thief of his honour, 
Giorgio Viola had not stirred from the spot. He stood, 
his old gun grounded, his hand grasping the barrel near 
the muzzle. After the lancha carrying off Nostromo 
for ever from her had left the shore, Linda, coming up, 
stopped before him. He did not seem to be aware of 
her presence, but when, losing her forced calmness, 
she cried out — 

“Do you know whom you have killed.^” he an- 
swered — 

“Ramirez the vagabond.” 

White, and staring insanely at her father, Linda 
laughed in his face. After a time he joined her faintly 
in a deep-toned and distant echo of her peals. Then 
she stopped, and the old man spoke as if startled — 

“He cried out in son Gian’ Battista’s voice.” 


564 


NOSTROMO 


The gun fell from his opened hand, but the arm re- 
mained extended for a moment as if still supported. 
Linda seized it roughly. 

“You are too old to understand. Come into the 
house.” 

He let her lead him. On the threshold he stumbled 
heavily, nearly coming to the ground together with 
his daughter. His excitement, his activity of the last 
few days, had been like the flare of a d^dng lamp. He 
caught at the back of his chair. 

“In son Gian’ Battista’s voice,” he repeated in a 
severe tone. “I heard him — Ramirez — the miser- 
able ” 

Linda helped him into the chair, and, bending low, 
hissed into his ear — 

“You have killed Gian’ Battista.” 

The old man smiled under his thick moustache. 
Women had strange fancies. 

“Where is the child.^” he asked, surprised at the pene- 
trating chilliness of the air and the unwonted dimness 
of the lamp by which he used to sit up half the night 
with the open Bible before him. 

Linda hesitated a moment, then averted her eyes. 

“She is asleep,” she said. “We shall talk of her to- 
morrow.” 

She could not bear to look at him. He filled her with 
terror and with an almost unbearable feeling of pity. 
She had observed the change that came over him. He 
would never understand what he had done; and even 
to her the whole thing remained incomprehensible. 
He said with difficulty — 

“Give me the book.” 

Linda laid on the table the closed volume in its worn 
leather cover, the Bible given him ages ago by an 
Englishman in Palermo. 


THE LIGHTHOUSE 


565 

*^The child had to be protected,” he said, in a strange, 
mournful voice. 

Behind his chair Linda wrung her hands, crying with- 
out noise. Suddenly she started for the door. He 
heard her move. 

“Where are you going he asked. 

“To the light,” she answered, turning round to look 
at him balefully. 

“ The light ! Si — duty.” 

Very upright, white-haired, leonine, heroic in his 
absorbed quietness, he felt in the pocket of his red shirt 
for the spectacles given him by Dona Emilia. He put 
them on. After a long period of immobility he opened 
the book, and from on high looked through the glasses 
at the small print in double columns. A rigid, stern 
expression settled upon his features with a slight frown, 
as if in response to some gloomy thought or unpleasant 
sensation. But he never detached his eyes from the 
book while he swayed forward, gently, gradually, till 
his snow-white head rested upon the open pages. A 
wooden clock ticked methodically on the white-washed 
wall, and growing slowly cold the Garibaldino lay 
alone, rugged, undecayed, like an old oak uprooted by 
a treacherous gust of wind. 

The light of the Great Isabel burned unfailing above 
the lost treasure of the San Tome mine. Into the 
bluish sheen of a night without stars the lantern sent 
out a yellow beam towards the far horizon. Like a 
black speck upon the shining panes, Linda, crouching 
in the outer gallery, rested her head on the rail. The 
moon, drooping in the western board, looked at her 
radiantly. 

Below, at the foot of the cliff, the regular splash of 
oars from a passing boat ceased, and Dr. Monygham 
stood up in the stern sheets. 


566 


NOSTROMO 


“Linda!” he shouted, throwing back his head. 
“Linda!” 

Linda stood up. She had recognized the voice. 

“Is he dead?” she cried, bending over. 

“Yes, my poor girl. I am coming round,” the doctor 
answered from below. “Pull to the beach,” he said 
to the rowers. 

Linda’s black figure detached itself upright on the 
light of the lantern with her arms raised above her head 
as though she were going to throw herself over. 

“It is I who loved you,” she whispered, with a face 
as set and white as marble in the moonlight. “I! 
Only I! She will forget thee, killed miserably for 
her pretty face. I cannot understand. I cannot un- 
derstand. But I shall never forget thee. Never!” 

She stood silent and still, collecting her strength to 
throw all her fidelity, her pain, bewilderment, and de- 
spair into one great cry. 

“Never! Gian’ Battista!” 

Dr. Monygham, pulling round in the police-galley, 
heard the name pass over his head. It was another 
of Nostromo’s triumphs, the greatest, the most en- 
viable, the most sinister of idl. In that true cry of 
undying passion that seemed to ring aloud from Punt a 
Mala to Azuera and away to the bright line of the 
horizon, overhung by a big white cloud shining like a 
mass of solid silver, the genius of the magnificent Cap- 
ataz de Cargadores dominated the dark gulf containing 
his conquests of treasure and love. 


THE END 


V 


41 









THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS 
CJAIIDEN CITY, N. Y, 



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